They Oughtta Fix This

Yesterday, we had several lines of heavy thunderstorms roll through the area. The sky was ominous on the way to work.

No that's not worrying at all. Why do you ask? It took, roughly 15 minutes for the first line to rumble by the office. It got dark.

This photo doesn't convey just how dark it was. The streetlights and parking lot lights were on as the first line started to come through.

One of the only detriments to this building is that drainage behind us is not very good. The overnight storms had dumped quite a bit of water, water which doesn't drain well from the area behind the building.

This is looking northwest. The ramp in the foreground goes into our back door.

We jokingly refer to this as "the lake". You can see how dark it got because you can see into the packaging company across the lake. Normally, even when they have doors open, we can't see into the warehouse.

The water extends south to the entry into the delivery area. It's important to note where the water is, in relation to the cars parked back here. Gene and Matt will park up next to the stairs because their offices are close to our rear door. I didn't get it on camera but Gene came down here and decided, because he saw Matt and I on the back steps, to drive through the edge of the water. He lifted up a nice plume. He said there was no way he was driving in the middle of the water. It was, at 8 am, too deep for his car. We were all rueing the loss of my Jeep. I'd have driven through this, really fast. That was one thing I loved to do on the Jeep; drive through water puddles. I still do, but you could go into deeper water and get higher side plumes with the Jeep.

It rained; really, really, rained; hard, pounding rain; off and on all morning. My phone camera couldn't capture the rain. It was coming down so hard, you couldn't see across the street. It was a curtain of gray. We have a skylight in the main area and it sounded like someone was on the roof tossing rocks on the skylight, it was raining so hard. We would go into the main area and check the corners of the skylight. The company who did our remodel did a good job sealing the skylight. We have no leaks.

About noon, Gene looked out his office window which overlooks the parking lot. He'd been doing a lot of reports and hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to outside. It's raining. There's water in the back. Okay. We are all, pretty much, minding our own business. We hear, "Holy shit! You guys gotta come see this!" We go to the warehouse, where Gene opens the ramp door.

The water which had been right at the foot of the ramp this morning, is a "wee bit" deeper at noon. Yes, it was still raining, although not as hard.

The water laps at the top of the bottom step of the steps up to the back door.

We stood there and the boss, in a quite bemused tone of voice said, "You know, they really oughtta fix this." Meanwhile, Tara goes into the front closet and gets the Wellies. We have three pair of boots in the office available for people to use when you find yourself in soggy surroundings. She put on the boots and decided to walk across the back lot.

She's at what is probably the deepest point. The lot slopes from both buildings to the middle, where she's standing. The water came up to within one inch of the top of the boots. Notice the cars behind her and then scroll up to the same cars this morning. We got a little bit of water.

This morning, there was still water in the back lot. It had gone down to yesterday morning's levels. By noon, it had drained away, which was good because Matt needed to load his car for a trip to service equipment tomorrow. We don't have a basement so it doesn't impact us, other than being unable to pull a car into the warehouse to load. But companies north and south of us get larger deliveries. There is no way a delivery company could come back here. Semis wouldn't be affected at the warehouse, but you have to worry, just a bit, about your car when you see all this water.

It's supposed to be dry now until next week. Yeah, they really do need to fix this.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Speaking of 16

The actual date was January 10th. It was a Sunday. The night before, we'd had our office holiday party. With the move and Gene expecting his first child in December, we decided it just wasn't prudent to have a holiday party that month. Gene's daughter was born a month early but we were so busy in December, that, as we sat around the table in the restaurant, we were very, very glad we hadn't tried to shoehorn an evening meal in on a Saturday night in December.

I happened to mention I was coming up on my work anniversary and was thinking of bringing food in. It kind of went over people's heads in the noise of the restaurant so I decided to just do it, rather than solicit what they might like. I went to Panera and got a dozen bagels.

*GASP! I know what you're thinking. This is not Dunkin Donuts. I thought about it, but, in the past, when I've brought in donuts for meetings, not all of them have been eaten. I got cream cheese; regular and honey walnut. It turned out that Matt wasn't in the office at all on Monday, having had to go service a machine in the hinterlands. Mike was thrilled with bagels, "except we don't have a toaster. I always toast my bagel." Three bagels didn't get eaten on Monday. The next day, Matt was in the office and didn't have time to grab breakfast before coming in. "Deb brought bagels yesterday," Tara said. "There are still some left in the fridge." So Matt ate the last three. "Thanks Deb! You saved me!"

16 years. That's a long time.

Beverage:  Raspberry Seltzer

Deb

Evolution-Part 1

Furniture and 90% of the office was moved on Saturday, December 12th. Our computers stayed behind because we didn't have service in the new space. At noon, my new office looked like this.

"Yeah, those bookshelves were in my old office so I guess just put them in my new office."

Originally, we were going to use the extra office we have as a library, of sorts. As you can imagine, we have a lot of reference material for construction, mining and demolition. It's a very narrow slice of the publishing world, but there are books printed about these topics and we get a couple every so often. As our area of work is not taught in universities, much of our knowledge comes from on-the-job experience and the rare tome or paper detailing the effects of ground vibrations on structures. Books tended to be scattered about people's offices and we thought it would be better if we had one spot for them.

But, files this idea under "best laid plans". That "library" is going to be someone's office in the next few months so the shelf units were stuck in my office until further notice, since that's where they had started in the old space. On Wednesday, December 16th, with Internet up and running, we moved completely and my computer was set up.

Things are a mess, as you would expect. I had to empty the desk so I tossed all my files and stuff into bags and boxes. The shelf units were moved away from the hole in the wall where the sliding window was to go so I could see anyone who walked in. At this point, I have sorted through the empty box to find all my files and at least get back to working, sort of.

Since mid-December, things have come along. The corner cabinet was moved into place and my photos and mementos placed on it.

That's a paper recycling cube to the right. Our cleaning service doesn't quite understand that we actually recycle here so all of our carefully sorted recyclables have been dumped into garbage bags. But, they are new and we are new and we'll get this sorted out.

The bottom of this unit now has my rocks from various projects. That might seem weird but I've been on some big jobs and I have rocks or chunks of concrete from Soldier Field and 1930's-era Sheridan Road, terra cotta from a building that once stood where Prentiss Children's Hospital is now and rebar from Michigan Avenue. These pieces were scattered about my old office. Now, they have a place to be. The piece of rebar is going to hang on the wall, but I need to get my posters and other wall things up first.

They finally got the window installed right before Christmas. At one point, I was kind of sad to lose a whole wall of potential display area, but I have to say, being able to see people coming in is huge. We don't get many people here; UPS, the mailman, building maintenance; but seeing them and my co-workers come into the building is very important. The other thing that I've discovered is how expansive it makes the office feel. I have huge windows to my east but being able to look out of the office in what amounts to another window is wonderful. I generally don't have claustrophobia but extra light is a good thing.

Two of the bookshelves, of the four I had, were commandeered by Tara. I still have one plus this corner unit. I really had no use for the other ones. I was kind of amazed at how much stuff I kept because my former boss said "It will be useful sometime." Um...no...not really. Back in October, when we started the packing process, we took 8 construction garbage bags of garbage to the dumpster. Since moving and, as we've all settled in, there have been 8 more bags of garbage out the door. In a typical week, we don't generate much. Our data is 80% digital now. Our cleaning service comes every other week. It works.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

"It's so you, Deb."

Between the post below and today, there was a visit to the new office. The walls are up and the painting is done. We walked in and knew this was going to be a place we can work comfortably in for years.

There is a huge amount of space here. We're going to put a large conference table by the post. That couldn't be moved. We're going to get a large TV to hang on the wall. The office schedule and some of the other programs we use will be on this TV. Everyone will be able to see where people and equipment are. We joked that we'll be happily ensconced in the office come NCAA men's basketball time so we can watch the Wednesday-Friday daytime games out here. Um...right. The far wall will have our equipment lists and there is room for our fax (yes, some clients use only fax), copier and printer AND boxes of supplies for all of those machines. There will be room to move around someone who is at the copier, if you have to use the printer, a luxury we don't have now.

This is the accent wall to the left when you walk in.

Eventually, we'll stencil the company logo and name on the wall. That's a task for when it's winter and we're not pulling out hair out trying to get work done.

We have a large store room at the west end of the suite.

That's Gene checking out the small stand sink we have in the corner. The floor is sealed concrete. We did not need or want, tile in this area because, and we're so excited about this feature,

we have a drive up ramp. We'll be able to back our cars in to load and unload without having to traipse through the office or lug things up or down stairs or through 3 doors. All of our equipment and supplies will be in this room. It looks huge but we are thinking it will fill up fairly quickly, once everything gets moved in. Our equipment goes into the ground so having a sink where we can wash off pieces is wonderful. We don't need much.

Gene, Matt and Tara have windows that overlook the store room. We all got to pick our office colors. This is Gene's.

"Cucumber for the win!" he said. Once it got up on the walls, he's thinking, with the west windows, it may be too bright.

Matt went with a dark ivory.

You can see how the office looks into the storage area. Matt's office doesn't have windows or a skylight so having this window into the storage area with it's large floor to ceiling windows will provide him with some natural light.

And then there's Tara's office.

That's...blue. She originally wanted a royal blue, which would be a shade darker than this. It's the color of the Buffalo Sabers, her favorite hockey team. But, when she looked at the unpainted drywall and her paint color, she felt the royal blue would be too dark. I love this color, but not on all four walls. She hasn't seen this yet.

We have a storage room and another office which were painted in the color Matt chose; nice and neutral. We will need to hire another person next year. If they want a different color than Matt's color, we'll deal with it then.

We have a small kitchenette.

We're getting a "dorm fridge" to go in the space. We don't cook meals here beyond what we can microwave, and there will be enough room for a coffee maker for Matt and Tara. The rest of us don't drink coffee. What paper goods we use; paper plates, napkins, utensils, will fit in the cupboards.

This is Mike's office.

Once he saw this color on all the walls, he wasn't very happy with it. I don't think it's a bad color, but I think it's a bit overpowering for all four walls. However, I did point out that we're seeing the naked walls. Gene and Mike may be happy with their colors once they get stuff up on the walls, same with Tara's color.

The walls in the men's and women's bathrooms are this dark tan.

Tara and I are going to add wall paper borders and other items to give each bathroom a distinct character. The first one we will do, the women's bathroom, obviously, is going to be beach accents. The bathrooms are huge because they have to be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. And, we found out that village code requires that bathrooms be delineated by sex if there is more than one. We have all agreed that if one bathroom is being used and the other is free, we're using it.

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. This is looking southeast.

The hole in the south wall is for the sliding glass window. That's Hawkeye gold on the east wall. Here's a better photo of the east wall.

I love, love, love that yellow. The two side walls are an ivory. And here is the west wall.

The dark gray is perfect. Right now, the focal piece on this wall is going to be my "Fantasia" poster. I have to get an actual frame for it. I'm going to paint the frame red. I think I will also put framed items from this magical Hawkeye football season in this corner, in black and gold frames. I have some awards and a counted cross-stitch piece currently on the wall behind me, but those will go at the west end of south wall, along with some of the photos I have on the window ledge in my current office. I need to get a plant stand to put in the left corner of the window and, if they take all my bookshelves for use in our "library", then I'll get another one to house the few things I have on shelves. That would go to the east side of the sliding window.

This is the best part, however.

This is the sliding window. Under this will be an 18 inch shelf for incoming and outgoing mail. Plus, I can see if anyone comes into the office. The view when you look through here? Remember this?

Oh yeah. I can hardly wait to figure out how to stencil this on the wall.

Yes, I would agree this office is so me. It's much bigger than my current office. It's got so much more light. And the paint scheme reflects exactly who I am. We are starting our move this coming week. The door should be keyed on Monday. Hello color. Hello excitement.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

No Barry White

In the madness which was the past month, stuff at the office just got piled. I know that feeling as my house is in need of a serious cleaning. It's spring, right, so spring cleaning is something I really want to do. Anyway, we finally had a day to consolidate and clean and we discovered a mess of sandbags.

What makes this funny is that, at the beginning of March, Tara and Mike had a sandbags and no one else did. Suddenly, at the beginning of April, we have 6 in this pile. So, are sandbags like plastic hangers in that you buy a package of 5 and have 20 in 2 months? I swear we don't play Barry White or any romantic music. Do they reproduce asexually? If not, which color is female and which color is male?

In actuality, they were obtained at several job sites we were at. We needed a sandbag for our equipment and the client said, "Take it" when the job was done. Still, the idea of sandbags mating while our backs are turned provides a chuckle.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

I'm Going to a Wedding

The dress came yesterday. I knew it was on its way. The shop where we all got our dresses called me last week to let me know it was in and to arrange shipping. I decided to send it to the office when informed the parcel would come FedEx and there needed to be a signature in order to receive it. Sometimes, I see FedEx trucks in the evening but I'm pretty sure they deliver, like UPS, during the day. The FedEx driver was quite surprised when I hugged him after he handed me the box. I was excited. What can I say?

Tara wanted to see the dress and, let's face it, so did I, so I put it on at the office. The one I had tried on at the store was black lace over a dark blue. I got black lace over a dark wine color. It's a two-piece, top and skirt. You can sort of see the colors in the top. I'm sure it will look better when it's at a wedding and not in the hallway outside the bathroom.

I took it home and put on the skirt with the shoes.

Uh oh. They match. The burgundy shoes are perfect with the dress. I'm also kind of liking the socks I had on.

They kind of resemble the lace overlay. Today's socks don't really do anything for me.

I love them; they are the companion socks to the aqua ones I wore before; but I'm not feeling this is the right pair.

I still have quite a few more to go through before the choice is made. I don't need another pair, but if I could find black and white striped socks, like the wicked witch's, I think I'd have a winner.

The top of the dress is sheer. I won't be wearing a necklace. I had given thought to a bracelet, as I have a red beaded one, but, now that the dress is here, I don't think a bracelet is necessary. I have the right earrings, too. I should clip them to the dress bag so I don't forget them and then have to spend time wandering stores looking for just the right pair, which is sitting at home in the earring case.

So, I'm ready. What an incredible load off my mind that is. My biggest worry now is finding the right socks to wear under the skirt. We're having a wedding in March!

Beverage:  Earl Grey tea

Deb

Going Unplugged

It's been a very unique few days in the office. We're going through one of the many spurts of busyness that often hits us. We wait on calls to confirm appointments. The client needs things NOW. If I do this and Tara does that and Gene can do this, that means Mike can go here and we'll send Pam over there. But if we get a call about 'x', well, all bets are off on getting things done.

When I first started, this thing called "e-mail", wasn't the preferred method of communication. Phone calls and faxes and the post office got plans, specs, requirements and notes back and forth. We got company email in summer of 2001, the first office in the company to be connected via this Internet thing to the main office. My then boss dismissed this as little more than smoke and mirrors and it would never replace the fax machine as a work horse of communication.

And you're giggling or guffawing, right now, because I can hear you. We still do some things via fax, but most communication is first via phone and then via email. Appointments are scheduled through email. Contracts have been sent via email for preliminary approval. Requests for proposals are always sent via email. I do a small trade newsletter and all the information I publish in the newsletter has been gleaned from online sites who send me information via email.

The office email died some time on Thursday. We could not access it on our desktops. Mike could get it on his iphone but I don't have my smart phone synch'd to receive email. (I'm thinking that might be something I should do now.) He was the only person, from Thursday afternoon through 2 p.m. today, to see any kind of office correspondence. Good luck looking at plans on an iphone. He would forward things on to his primary personal account so he could look at them at home at bigger than 4 inches.

The degree of angst this produced was amazing. You'd think we'd been bombed back into the stone age, resorting to communication via smoke signals. Clients were reasonably understanding that we were working on the problem but lags in communication caused some to be less than charitable with our later than they wanted replies. "It's absolutely crucial to business to have a working email," I heard on several occasions. "This is horrible, beyond horrible, that our email is not working."

I suppose, in this day and age, that is a true statement. As I have dealt with needing to make appointments and exchanging information, I have some observations. Having email means less planning goes into preparedness. The almost instantaneous nature of email means that you don't have to build into your need for information, the delay by sending something via post. There is a huge amount of assuming that because you need something now, the receiver is just sitting around waiting for your contact. "I'm sending you 35 pages of documents. I need your proposal by the end of the week." Um...see above for how busy we are. In the past, you'd never hear that. The documents would come 2 weeks before the proposal was needed. I really, really wish that, sometimes, I could say, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Email excuses the planner whose desk is a nightmare from being organized.

The second observation is that we have become so dependent upon technology that when the office email goes down, when the power goes out, when our Internet fails, we do not have skills to do our work. There is a whole generation who does not know how to write letters by hand, how to make a typewriter work to print a label, how to pick up the phone and talk to a client because everything is done by technology. They cannot do their job without the LCD in front of them.

The last observation is that having all your email come to your phone means you are never without it. Think about the last time you drove some place and did NOT see someone driving while talking on their phone. What is so important that you have to yak it up while you are driving?

Going without company email has caused me to decide to do something I've thought about for a couple of years now. We always think we are a better driver than that guy in the next lane and this greatly comes into play when we are talking on our phone while driving. There are reasons laws exist to prohibit texting while driving and talking on cell phones while in school and construction zones. Ironically, in my Facebook Mythbusters feed, there was a test of the "myth" that you are a worse driver while talking on the phone than you are when you're drunk. You should watch this.

I have decided I will no longer talk or text while driving. It is so tempting to pick up the phone because you're driving down a straight highway at 65 mph. You'll be fine. Or to think, because you're going "only" 30 miles per hour, that you can handle the phone call and the stop and go traffic. I realize that my reflexes aren't what they used to be or maybe never were and if I have to listen to what you are telling me and pay attention to traffic, I simply can't do both. And, studies are increasingly showing that we humans aren't set up to multitask, period, let alone when we are at the wheels of a car.

So, I took the pledge. Sheila Simon, Illinois' current lieutenant governor signed this and I'm encouraging you to do so as well. If I'm in my car and you call my cell phone, you're going to get my voice mail. Leave me a message. I'll call you as soon as I can safely pull over or when I get to my destination. Whatever you have to tell me, even if it is a genuine emergency, I will listen to but when I listen to it, you will have my undivided attention.

Thanks to 2.5 days without email, I'm also thinking of having technology-free days, but that's a work in progress. Here's to reclamation of a small portion of my life and to being more fully aware of what's going on around me.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb