Something happened today that I've been dreading. I missed one of our choral performances because I had to work. I was given a high priority task yesterday and it was strongly implied that it needed to be done today. Truth be told, it would have been difficult for me to arrive at the performance on time because the traffic is so bad during rush hour that it can take more than an hour to get from Redwood City to Cupertino. The performance was scheduled to start at 6pm, which would have required me to leave work at 5pm or earlier.

I didn't feel comfortable trying to work on some of it before the performance and the rest afterwards. I used to be able to do that at AV, but that was an entirely different situation. I had a lot more experience with what I was doing, so I could better gauge how long it would take me to complete tasks. In this case, I was implementing something in Python, which I don't know very well, and I was modifying someone else's code, which is generally more difficult than modifyng one's own code. There was also the possibility that someone might ask me to make more changes, so I wanted to be around for that. Finally, since I'm still a temp worker (no word yet on my status), I thought it would look bad for me to leave before finishing.

I left messages with my section leader and director around noon apologizing for being unable to make the performance. I haven't heard back from anyone yet so I don't know how it went. Given my circumstances I think I did the right thing. It wouldn't have been such an issue if I wasn't performing the duet. Sometimes, people who are doing solos, duets, etc. are no-shows and our director has to ask other people to stand in for them at the last minute, but at least I gave her fair warning several days ago that I would probably be late and maybe not even be there.

I was able to finish coding so I feel somewhat relieved. I still have to write some documentation and should perhaps do some more testing. After that I will return to the program I was working on before being interrupted by the Python task.