"Two Weeks!"

Back when Tom Hanks was just a silly actor (instead of The Great American Actor Of Our Time), he did a documentary on home improvement called "The Money Pit". Oh, it may look like a comedy -- but any home owner who has ever had work done on their house will recognize just how deadly accurate the movie is. One of the running jokes in the movie is when a contractor is asked how long a particular job will take, and the contractors always respond with, "Two weeks!"

I knew that when I got into work today it would be a construction zone. The company has recognized how difficult it is to work in the open cube farm environment of our space, and after much planning the contractors have begun the work to improve the space and create several enclosed offices. They assure us that it will take two weeks to complete.

To their credit, over the weekend the managed to install the entire framework for the new drop ceiling. They also enlarged the break room area by moving the wall of the server room in by three feet. Unfortunately, in the process of taking down the old wall and putting up the new one they managed to take out the air conditioning in the server room. As I arrived at work it was 90+ degrees in there, and they had the door wide open with a pair of fans running full blast to try to get some circulation going and cool down the room. There was also an obvious residue of dust in the air, and a smell like burnt marshmallows. In under an hour I had a raging headache.

So I am working from home for the rest of the day, and for tomorrow as well. I have to go in Wednesday because I have meetings to attend. The same goes for Thursday. I have seen the construction schedule for Thursday night and Friday night, and I have no intention of being in the office on Friday.

I really truly do appreciate why the company is doing this, and it will be great when the work is completed... I just wish they had simply told everyone to work from home this week and then let the contractors go full bore for seven straight days instead of trying to have construction done at night and pretend to have some sort of work environment during the day. It just ain't gonna work.

What a blast!

Today for the very first time I skated around Greenlake. Actually, I did three laps around the lake before I finally stopped. I probably could have gone one more time around, but I didn't want to push myself too hard. Probably just as well, because I can definitely feel it in my legs right now.

I had put off skating there for the last week, mostly because I didn't want to be a danger to any random passers by. As it turns out, I had no problems at all. There is only one spot that is hairy at all, and that's a long down slope on the southwest side of the lake just past the grandstands. It doesn't seem like much when you are walking it, but on skates it is amazing how quickly you pick up speed on even a gradual downhill slope. By the third time around I had a good feel for it, and had no problems at all.

I gotta tell ya, I am going to be bummed when it starts raining and I can't go skating as often. It's definitely addictive stuff...