A post in which it is year end

Work today was surprisingly subdued, comparatively.  Usually the last day of the fiscal year is one of great ballyhoo.  It doesn't affect my area so much (my big work begins after the confetti has fallen), but overall things seemed rather subdued today.  All the paperwork I had been trying to get through was processed, and I got my last last-minute write-off approval back from California early in the day.

About 1pm the power went out.  We're used to that.  For some reason, the power where we are is spotty, and after a couple of notable outages, the company spent a small fortune having a huge diesel generator installed to power the building in the event of an outage.  Aside from a blink in the power, outages don't usually affect the office.  The problem was that the generator failed today.  After starting initially, after about twenty minutes, everything went wonk. 

I went on to lunch, and we had partial power by the time I got back, but by that time the computer system was messed up and I never did get back in.  The internet came back up, and I made use of that.  But by the end of the day, it became obvious that nothing was going to happen, and the year ended with a whimper instead of the customary bang.  Personally, I think it is just as well.  Since I do clean-up, I see the results of people working frantically to push things out for year end.  It's probably just as well that cooler heads prevailed, however frustrating it was for management.

I didn't have anything planned tonight, and didn't end up doing much after work.  I was going to see everyone tomorrow night anyway, and with the holiday madness coming up, I figured there were worse things I could do than grab a little alone time at the house.

I went by the grocery store to get cake stuff.  After much discussion with all parties, I had decided to bake a pound cake for the party tomorrow.  Plain pound cake is Lady Beth's favorite, but I knew Lynn and Lori would want something chocolate.  My compromise was that I would do a plain (in Lady Beth-speak that means one with no lemon flavoring) pound cake, but would put a mocha-chocolate glaze on it.  I figured if Lady Beth didn't want the glaze, she could feed hers to Lynn.

Unfortunately I realized when I got home that I had forgotten the butter, which was one of the main things I had gone to get.  Grrrrr.  But I wasn't going back out tonight.  I just decided since I would be up early in the morning anyway, I'd go get it then.