No love

I've been engineering in the hot, hot desert for the past four days. On Monday, I drove to Capistrano and back after a brutal morning of arguing with our new software suite. Before that, we spent the entire weekend in Chicago for work. And last week was no cake walk, either. Come to think of it, all of our "usually quiet" prelude to the "month of vacations" has been hell. And at 345p, when I'm driving in circles around Tempe, trying to find a FedEx location that hasn't a) closed or b) moved, my boss sent me a text to tell me I need to get out of Jury Duty next week.

Seriously?!

I spent part of this morning standing on a rickety ladder trying to fix something while talking a clinical customer through a troubleshooting call, because we don't have enough people right now. (Read "clinical customer" as "can't tell his own arm from a robot arm" and you'll start to grasp the futility of this.) I phone-fixed something in Yuma to save us all the long, hot, dusty drive. I wasn't even out of my hotel door this morning when Sales was pushing for a Sunday night departure so I can work on one of their precious revenue recognition systems early Monday morning. I have been working my ass off here in the desert, while I don't feel well, without a weekend, wearing what is probably my last pair of clean socks and underwear and my manager wants me to weasel out of Jury Duty on 3-working-days' notice?

I hope to God that the words "Contempt of Court" factor into that scenario so I can say NO as loudly as I really want to.

And when I got to PHX, e-ticket couldn't find my registration so I am now C21 in the boarding order. I'm the freaking energizer bunny and I just want to go home, and let the battery run dry on my work phone.

NNNNNNNNNNG.