managing stress in a fast-paced world

The day didn’t start off great, I came into work with a server down, it had been down for 3 hours already, someone else was working on it, but I tookover for the next 2 hours. All is better now though, and sysadminday is today, a few weeks ago I dropped hints that the day was coming up soon. My boss remembered and I got a cheesecake brownie, strawberry shake, and a thank you card delivered to me. It totally changed the outlook of my day, it’s the small things that really move me.

I picked up Gunther today after 1 year from my accident, he looks good, and it’s nice to have him back in my life. Sad that he has to go back… not everything is fixed yet. Yes Gunther is my VW Passat, and I’ve been without him for a year now.

It’s been a long time since I got sick, at least 6 months. Normally I am a healthy person and pretty resilient, but when I do get sick, it’s pretty bad. I’m pretty miserable and all I do is lay in bed and sleep. This past weekend I had some McDonalds and right after I came down with a huge headache. For the next 5 hours or so I just sat around and dealt with it, which wasn’t fun, later that night I took Tylenol which didn’t seem to help. My gut is telling me it was a combination of the heat and food, maybe dehydration. One thing I’ve never been good at is drinking lots of water.

Anyways, yesterday after work I was at home and I felt really uneasy, the smell of certain foods seemed to almost trigger the puking reflex. Just like in that Seinfeld episode, I havn’t puked for over 10 years now and I’m proud of it.

Last night I got home around 6pm and ate a burger, then I fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until this morning, I woke up and was still tired. I thought about not going into work, I logged on and saw I had a meeting today and showered and left for work.

I used to do this every week, it’s been a while though, I don’t like spending all day in bed… yesterday was unusual, normally I wake up well rested, but not this morning.

This weekend was unusually busy, I spent friday night celebrating my sister Aimee’s birthday at E&O Trading in downtown San Jose. That place was nice, better than the one in SF I think.

I was so tired from that night out I slept in for the entire morning saturday. I did wake up and burn some DVD’s before my burner quit on me… Something is telling me it’s a heat issue that’s messing with it, either that or the media I bought is really bad.

Sunday was a family event, I had extended family visiting from Ohio, they’ve been here a week, but have been hanging out in LA. For something like 5 hours we all hung around my grandma’s home. It was kinda hot, but sort of relaxing.

I’m sort of glad I didn’t go sand dune camping since the group that went didn’t actually get to go. But then again, I didn’t get any cleaning or whatever that I wanted to get done this weekend either. So little time to do everything.

I’m almost done implementing comments into this site, it should be neat to finally have the ability to communicate with my visitors. Testing should start this weekend and hopefully be launched sometime middle of next week.

I think I need a vacation, I used to think that vacations were for the weak… I thought that the weekend was enough of a vacation, I also used to enjoy work. Now I can’t wait until the week ends, and the weekends are never long enough.

What I really miss are the days when I didn’t work. Not that it was great not having income, but at least it was nice to be able to do anything or nothing all day long. To never be tired or have responsabilities. Maybe it’s the industry I am in or the current economy…

If I was to go on vacation, I think I would want to visit Vietnam again. Not sure why I feel attached, but I think it’s a place I could go and relax. Maybe that’s the appeal of Vietnam, the low costs and relaxing nature of the country.

My auto insurance company sent me a letter a few days ago, I got it today. It basically says they will terminate my coverage soon. Sucks, now I need to find a new auto insurance company.

The other day I also got a letter from a company saying, “we’re going to sue you unless you call us to discuss a settlement.”

What’s going on with the world? I specifically went to traffic school so I wouldn’t get additional points against me. And doesn’t the other letter sound like extortion?