June 6: Good news. I am returning to this assignment on Monday even if the person I'm filling in for comes back. Which, even though she did finish her phone call with "See you all on Monday", she was still out-of-it from anesthesia at the time. The theory is that maybe once the anesthesia completely wore off, she might not feel so ready to return to work, so there are no guarantees as to whether she'll be in or not when Monday rolls around.

What IS certain is that they need someone who can research the tons of address info that needs to be added to their computer records. There are some sites which have the bare minimum of information, because they needed to get all the customers onto the computer system ASAP. To my surprise, they've only recently switched over from a manual/paper recordkeeping system to a computerized system. It appears that they were in a hurry to get the customers onto the database, so they could be assigned customer numbers.

That haste might have served a purpose at the time, but NOW it's clear that it can come back to haunt them. Two drivers left at the same time, and they took their knowledge of all their routes' sites with them. There was no record of the precise addresses of some of these places; the drivers were carrying that knowledge between their ears. This caused a mad scramble for a few days, to put it mildly. Some sites got no deliveries for a couple days, because there was no way to get a driver to cover them on such short notice. My contribution to putting this fire out was to go into "Gabey, Queen of Search Engines" mode and track down addresses from online. And BOY, have I ever been treasure-hunting online for information. I've found that combinations of Google, Mapquest, and parent companies' websites have been a superb resource.

In any event, at lunchtime today, I looked at the vast number of addresses that I still had left to track down (and this was after spending the past three days engaged in this research, practically nonstop). I realized that it wasn't going to be possible to look up that entire list of addresses before the workday ended. The office manager agreed with me, and asked if I was available to return to work on Monday. Well, I sure am! I'm glad, because not only will I get to return to an assignment I enjoy, but if all goes well, I will be able to finish all this research that they desperately need to have done. I would have hated to leave the project uncompleted. Heck, I hope they give me ALL the addresses on ALL the routes to look up. That should take several days, but it sure is something that will help them a whole lot. I stay working, they get a really large and necessary task completed: this is a win/win situation.

Tomorrow, Mark, Hat Trick, and I plan to go to the Belmont Stakes. At least, I'm HOPING we can get in. I have some concerns that there will be a mega-mob waiting to snap up the remaining unreserved seats. I really hope that the weather holds out. For something like the 15th or 16th weekend in a row, there is rain in the forecast. It would be reeeeally nice if we got some unexpected sunshine for once, or at least if we got just plain clouds with no precipitation.

As it is, everybody's feeling waterlogged and sunlight-deprived after having rain more often than not for the past month. We just completed the most sunless month of May in Philadelphia's history. I'm surprised that I haven't seen animals start to line up in pairs yet. Here's hoping that the only animals I see lining up tomorrow are the horses at the Belmont race track. ;o) In the meantime, I'm charging my camera's batteries, in anticipation of this outing.

So, who is Hat Trick? His full name is Hat Trick Hunter, and he is my little mascot. He's a Ty Teeny Beanie Bopper that I have been bringing with me on my travels (such as they are, lol) and photographing at all sorts of landmarks since I got him last summer. Incidentally... yes, I realize that home page is for the regular-sized beanie bopper. There's a separate page for the teenie beanie version of Hat Trick, but frankly, I like the regular page better, so that's the link I put in. In any event, I think he'll enjoy the Belmont stakes, don't you? :o)

P.S. Good thing I created this in a word processor. Blogger is having problems permitting logins. I might have to post it on Saturday (6/7).