Duking it out!
(Image borrowed from Todd Lockwood, which I hope is ok!)
When I ask how he's doing with regard to work, my co-worker Martin sometimes responds, "I'm duking it out!" That would definitely have been my response earlier this week, except no one was around to ask. I felt like the guy in the image above, only I didn't realize I'd be fighting more than one "enemy" when I started. Every time I thought I'd gotten things settled down, a new problem popped up.
It was supposed to be a relaxing week off work, since we typically shut down for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. I volunteered -- as I usually do -- to cover our IT systems over the break, and a problem developed just before I finished eating Christmas Eve dinner (which is really important to Ania, who spends that day and much of the one before preparing it), and I didn't get it stabilized until around 1:30AM Christmas Morning.
Little did I know, that was just the beginning; a total of 4 separate problems developed between Saturday and Tuesday! Fortunately, Martin returned from vacation Wed and helped a lot by taking over and putting the last remaing problem to bed.
On the bright side, I prevailed (I was able to at least mitigate, if not resolve all the problems), there were no lasting negative consequences from any of the problems, and it's been a while since I've had to excercise my problem-solving muscles to such an extent, and it felt good to see they're still in good condition!
Whew!