Back to work for three days

Well, I signed up for overtime for today...and I got it. So it's back to work tonight, and then Tuesday and Wednesday nights too. On Thursday a friend will be passing through the are and I'll want to meet up with him for lunch. Then it's mass sometime in the afternoon, dinner with my mom, and a New Year's Party (I think - I haven't received any recent reminders, so that might have changed.) So Thursday will be a bit of a marathon, and the challenge will be to get some sleep in there somewhere.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I may try to do some of the holiday visiting I haven't been doing. But when you have a car with 313,000 miles on it, you do have to be careful about long trips.

I actually don't go back to work after that until Wednesday the 6th, on a new experimental schedule where we'll be working fewer hours spread out over more days - instead of 48 hours every eight days we will work 40 hours every seven days, and instead of a 4-day-on 4-day-off schedule it will be 5 days on, 3 days off, with the first and last days of the 5 day rotation being partial days. It's confusing as hell, but there are very good reasons for trying it. Unfortunately, the practical upshot of commuting 5 days out of every 8 instead of 4 days out of every 8 is that the cost of commuting (as well as associated wear-and-tear) has gone up 25%. It's as if the price of gas went up from $3 a gallon to $3.75 a gallon. And before you suggest that everyone should start car pooling - there are practical considerations that make scheduling carpools impossible on these first and last days. Which means a major disruption for those who already carpool.

I wonder if any new employment opportunities will be coming to this region in the coming year.