Tuesday, October 19, 2004
So, how's it going?
Ah, my sadly neglected NoodleDog blog. If you’ve been following the stories, you knew I was planning & building (or having built) the new office space for my Property Management company. The project wrapped-up at the end of last week, with trades converging in a disturbing, yet beautifully choreographed dance of death. At any given time, there were furniture installers, painters, electricians, data/voice cablers, a carpenter (who, all by himself, could have frustrated God in about sixty seconds with his lack of any speed whatsoever), various staff members checking out the place, the building manager, the landlord and Dave (my boss). And, of course, me, from time to time. I would go to the space and check stuff out. Mostly, I’d get frustrated, of course, because things weren’t getting done in a timely fashion, and the movers were scheduled to move us on the weekend, come hell or high water. Hell did stop by briefly, took one look at the chaos, and promptly left, assured that everything was taken care of.
So we moved. I’m in the new office space right now. We have HUGE desks. We have fantastic carpeting. We have glorious warm colours on the walls and doorframes. We have the nicest tile floor in the lobby. We do not, however, have a reception desk, because we ordered it late (like, the week before the move), so it will get here sometime in November.
Basically, the last week of the project was pretty stressful, and I did manage to fall down my stairs (at home, so no worker’s compensation claim will be forthcoming) and slightly injure my neck. But all is forgotten now (except for the strange pain I have when I try to shoulder-check in the car, so if I cut you off, sorry!) because everyone is in, and everyone loves their new desks. That’s really all that matters to people – their desk-space. If their desk-space works for them, they could be working in a basement in Beirut, and they’d be fine, but if their desk-space isn’t to their liking, they could be in the most beautiful penthouse suite in the city, and all you’d hear is “my desk sucks…”.
The final snag in the space was that the aforementioned carpenter, who had been moving at the speed of molasses in January, failed completely to hang the doors. We have a total of eight doors in the space. They came out of the original space (which was completely demolished, but the frames & doors were saved for our use later on), and should, theoretically, have fit back into the rough openings nicely. They did not. The contractor I had install the frames failed to square them, then failed to return any of my calls. I am not expecting an invoice from him. The carpenter I then managed to find on such short notice that NO ONE ELSE in the city was available was an older gentleman with a limp who, I’m sure I’ve said before, was SLOW. SLOWER THAN DEATH!!! In three days, he was so totally unable to hang the doors that I dismissed him (kindly, because I felt bad about his limp and his age and all…) because Rob said we could do the doors ourselves on the weekend. Which we did. Rob hung the last two doors, and yea, they did not fit in the frames. But rather than sanding down the door’s edge and the frame, like the carpenter had been, Rob recommends moving the hinges in whatever distance the door is out. So hey, presto, the doors were done, and could be painted, which was my main concern for that day. I used my little spinning wheel rotary tool device to sand down the part of one frame that was binding, and will eventually get around to moving the hinges in a bit.
And this brings me to my point. There aren’t enough qualified, responsive trades in the city (that I know of). This construction boom (which has been going on for about five years now) has to stop. I need people to work on MY projects, rather than on everyone else’s. Heh.
News of the animals? Well, during my lapse in updating, I missed telling you about Thanksgiving. Rob took us camping (him, Cooter, Roofus and me). We sat around the fire a lot, and it snowed on the Saturday. Roofus wore his sweater, and although I think he liked it the first night, I think he didn’t like it the second night or the third night. We ate deep-fried turkey. There were many leftovers. I made an apple pie. I learned to drive the quad. It was a good time.
The cats spent that weekend with my parents. I heard some limited stories about Smudge’s daredevil performances, but nothing like I expected. Tobey remains unconvinced that the parents’ house is a safe place, and hides most of the time in the Grumpaw’s study. The Grumpaw remains unconvincing that the cats aren’t welcome there (because they really get spoiled when they visit).
Recently, we have been acclimatizing Cooter to the cats so he doesn’t chase them. He still wants to chase them, I think, but they don’t really run away much, so he’s disappointed most of the time. He can rush right up to Caspar, who will just stand there and watch him. Rumble doesn’t tolerate much in the way of shenanigans, so he will hiss and swat. Tobey hides under the bed (which seems to be his solution to most of life’s problems – a policy I may start to implement if things get too stressful here, I will just hide under my desk). Smudge baits Cooter a fair bit of the time. She runs right by him, or sits just out of reach, or looks at him from around the corner of the stairs. I think she’d play with him more if he weren’t so big (relatively) and unpredictable.
It looks like I will get a few more condo projects to manage, so that’s nice, but it will probably mean less time for blogging and general fooling around. The Grumpaw would tell me to “buckle down”. We had dinner with the whole family (mother, father, sister, her boyfriend, Rob and I), and it was actually not bad at all. It was even entertaining. The Grumpaw told us a story about Hallowe’en in New Brunswick, which is where he grew up. Apparently, it was quite a haven for recklessness and impudence on the part of the trick-or-treaters. The tricks they played were fairly dangerous, and one Hallowe’en, The Grumpaw was on his way to a mine out in the middle of nowhere, and they had cut a tree down across the road on a dark corner. Those crazy New Brunswickers…
Rob bought a truck. It runs, which is nice, but he intends to take it apart and amalgamate it with the truck he is already building in the garage so he can have a better truck. This probably means I will spend more evenings in the garage helping take stuff apart, which is always a fun time. Good thing I don’t have to work too much, here…
And that’s the latest news.
So we moved. I’m in the new office space right now. We have HUGE desks. We have fantastic carpeting. We have glorious warm colours on the walls and doorframes. We have the nicest tile floor in the lobby. We do not, however, have a reception desk, because we ordered it late (like, the week before the move), so it will get here sometime in November.
Basically, the last week of the project was pretty stressful, and I did manage to fall down my stairs (at home, so no worker’s compensation claim will be forthcoming) and slightly injure my neck. But all is forgotten now (except for the strange pain I have when I try to shoulder-check in the car, so if I cut you off, sorry!) because everyone is in, and everyone loves their new desks. That’s really all that matters to people – their desk-space. If their desk-space works for them, they could be working in a basement in Beirut, and they’d be fine, but if their desk-space isn’t to their liking, they could be in the most beautiful penthouse suite in the city, and all you’d hear is “my desk sucks…”.
The final snag in the space was that the aforementioned carpenter, who had been moving at the speed of molasses in January, failed completely to hang the doors. We have a total of eight doors in the space. They came out of the original space (which was completely demolished, but the frames & doors were saved for our use later on), and should, theoretically, have fit back into the rough openings nicely. They did not. The contractor I had install the frames failed to square them, then failed to return any of my calls. I am not expecting an invoice from him. The carpenter I then managed to find on such short notice that NO ONE ELSE in the city was available was an older gentleman with a limp who, I’m sure I’ve said before, was SLOW. SLOWER THAN DEATH!!! In three days, he was so totally unable to hang the doors that I dismissed him (kindly, because I felt bad about his limp and his age and all…) because Rob said we could do the doors ourselves on the weekend. Which we did. Rob hung the last two doors, and yea, they did not fit in the frames. But rather than sanding down the door’s edge and the frame, like the carpenter had been, Rob recommends moving the hinges in whatever distance the door is out. So hey, presto, the doors were done, and could be painted, which was my main concern for that day. I used my little spinning wheel rotary tool device to sand down the part of one frame that was binding, and will eventually get around to moving the hinges in a bit.
And this brings me to my point. There aren’t enough qualified, responsive trades in the city (that I know of). This construction boom (which has been going on for about five years now) has to stop. I need people to work on MY projects, rather than on everyone else’s. Heh.
News of the animals? Well, during my lapse in updating, I missed telling you about Thanksgiving. Rob took us camping (him, Cooter, Roofus and me). We sat around the fire a lot, and it snowed on the Saturday. Roofus wore his sweater, and although I think he liked it the first night, I think he didn’t like it the second night or the third night. We ate deep-fried turkey. There were many leftovers. I made an apple pie. I learned to drive the quad. It was a good time.
The cats spent that weekend with my parents. I heard some limited stories about Smudge’s daredevil performances, but nothing like I expected. Tobey remains unconvinced that the parents’ house is a safe place, and hides most of the time in the Grumpaw’s study. The Grumpaw remains unconvincing that the cats aren’t welcome there (because they really get spoiled when they visit).
Recently, we have been acclimatizing Cooter to the cats so he doesn’t chase them. He still wants to chase them, I think, but they don’t really run away much, so he’s disappointed most of the time. He can rush right up to Caspar, who will just stand there and watch him. Rumble doesn’t tolerate much in the way of shenanigans, so he will hiss and swat. Tobey hides under the bed (which seems to be his solution to most of life’s problems – a policy I may start to implement if things get too stressful here, I will just hide under my desk). Smudge baits Cooter a fair bit of the time. She runs right by him, or sits just out of reach, or looks at him from around the corner of the stairs. I think she’d play with him more if he weren’t so big (relatively) and unpredictable.
It looks like I will get a few more condo projects to manage, so that’s nice, but it will probably mean less time for blogging and general fooling around. The Grumpaw would tell me to “buckle down”. We had dinner with the whole family (mother, father, sister, her boyfriend, Rob and I), and it was actually not bad at all. It was even entertaining. The Grumpaw told us a story about Hallowe’en in New Brunswick, which is where he grew up. Apparently, it was quite a haven for recklessness and impudence on the part of the trick-or-treaters. The tricks they played were fairly dangerous, and one Hallowe’en, The Grumpaw was on his way to a mine out in the middle of nowhere, and they had cut a tree down across the road on a dark corner. Those crazy New Brunswickers…
Rob bought a truck. It runs, which is nice, but he intends to take it apart and amalgamate it with the truck he is already building in the garage so he can have a better truck. This probably means I will spend more evenings in the garage helping take stuff apart, which is always a fun time. Good thing I don’t have to work too much, here…
And that’s the latest news.
