Well, needless to say I survived last week. Despite the numerous rocks thrown in my path the office did get moved, the data and phone networks were eventually brought online and the unpacking is nearly completed. There will be plenty of finishing touches to complete, but these can be done at a relatively leisurely pace. But, at this point in time My office is basically set up with only a couple of boxes awaiting some sort of bookcase/shelving to come in before being unloaded. As I type, my boss is trying to assemble his Ikea window blinds (his office windows front right onto a sidewalk and he's becoming a bit bored already with feeling like an animal on exhibit at the zoo). The only pieces we're waiting on to complete the major load-in are our conference table, which will arrive Monday, and a buffet sideboard for our conference room, which is on back-order and may not ship until after the first of the year. Otherwise, we're more-or-less back to business as usual.
And I've walked to and from work three out of four days so far this week. Unfortunately, I also seem to have hit a bit of a plateau, and am struggling to get below 200 lbs. I'm holding steady, but haven't dropped any weight for the past few days.
The fundraiser went remarkably well; not as many in attendance as would have been my preference, but the staff was overjoyed, and despite the somewhat (IMO) middling turnout a good time was had by all. I've probably already mentioned it a thousand times, but one more won't hurt: my undying gratitude to everyone - performers, volunteers, artists, contributors - for helping to make it a success. I learned a lot in the process, and should be able to do an even better job of it next year - just have to figure out when to do it, since Halloween falls on a Sunday in 2010.
We Got To Move These Refrigerators, We Got To Move These Color TV's
It appears I made it to 49 after all. The way this past week started out, I wasn't exactly full of confidence I'd survive in good enough shape to be more than a blubbery pile of goo on the floor by now, but despite the set backs, the delays, all the things that were supposed to go one way, but insisted on going the other, here I am.
The second team of movers proved more than equal to the task, even despite the fact that our massive main reception desk initially couldn't be maneuvered out of the old office. But, removal of a few drop-ceiling panels and brackets gave us enough clearance to just squeeze it out.
And the guy who did our data line wiring just happened to be available for a brief window and was able to come in and rewire the entire phone system on Thursday, plus fix a couple of boo-boos (totally my fault) that were overlooked during his first installation.
So, once again, just about everything came down to the absolute wire. But, the good news is the phone system was up and running on Friday morning, we sussed out our data network and all the various and sundry machines are happily beeping and booping with each other and - most importantly - with the outside world. The only negatives at this point are one network jack that seems to be on-the-fritz, and the fact that my boss picked up a virus on his laptop most likely due to the temporary jury-rigged Internet connection we set up earlier in the week (we ganged my co-worker's Clear Wire modem to my wireless router, but had to leave everything open and unsecured, because nobody else could get my WEP access code to work - the techno-geeks among you know what I'm talkin' 'bout).
Friday morning I rented a small storage locker and in the afternoon picked up a rental van, and we all schlepped over to the old office to clean out the last of the odds-and-ends, hauled it all back to the new office, emptied the truck, then filled it with about 60 bankers boxes full of old documents we don't need on-site, but aren't allowed to throw away, and my boss and I then took them over to the storage facility and loaded them in. Even though I rented the smallest space they had available, we still only managed to fill it to about one-third capacity, which means we can still get to things in the highly unlikely event we ever need to access anything.
The final bit of business was to contract with someone to clean out the detritus still left at the old space and haul it off to the dump/recylers. There's a company in the same building that does this, but their estimate was IMO somewhat excessive, so I contacted the building maintenance man (the same guy who drove me to distraction on the kitchen counter project), and he underbid by about $200. Plus, he would have had to check us out of the space anyway, so this way we don't have to worry about that part of things either. He came by around 5:00 p.m., we handed him a check and all the keys and access cards for the old building and parking garage, and so the moving part is now officially done.
There's still a huge amount of work to do: lots of re-arranging, moving things into place, getting rid of packaging, along with general clean-up and a final move in of a couple of items, most notably our conference table which is in the process of having its surface refinished. But that will happen next week - or beyond.
I finally managed to attack my new office on Friday, and even in the short amount of time I was able to devote to it, got it into workable shape; now it's just a matter of dealing with the finishing touches, and turning the place into our new home. We have about a month before our annual Holiday Party, which should be plenty of time.
So, tomorrow it'll be back to a somewhat normal routine, plus playing catch-up on the rather modest backlog of things that didn't get dealt with last week. It's just good to have it all over and done with - the scope of this project turned out to be akin to the massive build-out at the Theatre I managed in the spring of 2008; just as nerve-wracking, frustrating, but ultimately satisfying in its completion.
Now, all I have to do today is whip together a ginormous fundraiser for tonight.
The Good Ship And True Was A Bone To Be Chewed When The Gales Of November Came Early
So, today is Moving Day. With the help of several over-the-counter pharmaceuticals (Thanks, VLW for the TheraFlu recommendation!) I managed 12 straight hours of sleep last night; not nearly enough to make up for three weeks continuous sleep-deprivation, but sufficient to get me through the day.
And I'm sure you're all sitting on the edge of your seats wondering how the day's been going, right? (Humor me, please. I could use a little levity right about now.)
Well, let's start with what's gone RIGHT so far - oh, wait. NOTHING has gone right so far.
Which leaves the following as "A Partial Listing OF What's Gone WRONG Today":
- The office movers apparently have never actually moved an office before, at least not one comprised of anything that weighs more than about 100 pounds. They can't take our regular household sized refrigerator or the largest pieces of office furniture.
- On top of that, the arrival time that I had scheduled for 9:00 a.m. turned out in actuality to be more like 12:00 Noon, which worked out somewhat seeing as how it was pouring rain for most of the morning anyway. The question now is, can they get back from the new site, pack up the remainder of what needs to go and then off-load it before 5:00 p.m.? My guess is, "probably not". So, how long in fact WILL it take them? Your guess is as good as mine at this point.
- As if that weren't enough, some of the pieces of furniture they were able to move won't fit through the doors to the rooms they're assigned (e.g. my new office desk). So, I'm going to have to disassemble a couple of pieces before they can be put into place, then reassemble them again. Not a huge task, just another thing to add to the ever growing List Of Things Still To Be Done.
- The phone lines went dead at around 9:30 this morning. That was expected, since they have to be switched off at one location before they can be activated at the other. Strangely however, the DSL line didn't go dead at the same time. When I called the phone company a couple of hours later, it turns out the service tickets for our three separate accounts hadn't been linked together, so the DSL switchover hadn't been scheduled until Friday! By the time I got that straightened out and got the deinstall/reinstall moved up to tomorrow, I got a call from our phone system tech who was trying to reinstall that end of things at the new location saying that: A of all.) all the phone jacks in our office need to be rewired because they're an old-style residential system that can't handle our multi-line system, and; B of all.) he doesn't have the equipment to do that kind of work, because it's going to require drilling through "hardpan walls" (there are no drop ceilings or fancy metal studs with convenient punch-outs through which to drop cable).
So, where did that leave me? The movers can't complete the move, the phone system company can't complete the install, my new office isn't even going to have a desk in it when I get over there, and I'm sitting in a half-empty office that currently looks like a complete and utter disaster area trying to juggle multiple calls on my cell phone - and it looks like it's going to start raining again any minute now.
Okay, maybe I exaggerated just slightly above; despite the continuous series of wild fires a few things have gone my way today: I found a professional office mover who, on less than 24 hours notice can pick up and deliver our larger items, and at the same rate as what I'm being charged by the other moving company. Also, after yet another call to the Business Services Dept. at QWest, I not only managed to get a second service order set up to install the DSL tomorrow, but they'll come prepared to drill in the additional phone lines as well.
As I write this, the movers are back for a second load, but they're going to leave behind most of the other file cabinets & desks. It's okay, I've already called the other movers and they can handle it within their window tomorrow morning.
And at least I've still got Internet access at work (that's also A Thing That's Gone Wrong, but one I can still use to my advantage.)
AND I haven't strangled anyone.
AND and I haven't gone completely bonkers.
AND AND after all the hubbub and insanity of the past several weeks I just now realized how quiet and peaceful it is here in the office right now.
Hm, maybe a little TOO quiet.
Like, the sort of quiet one might experience in the eye of a hurricane...
'Tis The Song The Sigh Of The Weary, Hard Times Hard Times Come Again No More
I didn't think we were going to make it - and it did in fact come right down to the wire. As of 10:00 p.m. last night the kitchen still wasn't completely finished and it was another sleepless night filled with thoughts of dread and dire vengeance.
At this point I'm so sleep deprived I've almost completely lost all sense of time: I drove a few miles north yesterday afternoon to attend a party at a friend's house that was actually scheduled for this evening. Tonight, I went back, was there for two hours and it felt like I'd been there all day. It's now 7:30 p.m. and I'm fully intending to crawl into bed as soon as I finish typing this.
This is the lesson I've learned about contractors: if you give them a deadline they will push you right up to it, within hours even. I think they get some perverse sort of pleasure out of watching their clients squirm and fidget and palpably vibrate just for the thrill of enpowerment it must give them; why else put another human being through that kind of torture?
But, whatever. It's done. There are still a handful of tiny details to complete, little bits-and-pieces that only someone who's been staring at that same spot on the wall for three straight months would probably even notice. But, from a purely functional perspective, those can be dealt with.
It's done, over, finito and we start moving at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. , Only of course, it's not done, and probably won't be for weeks, for however long it takes us to settle in and work the kinks out of the new space, the ones I hadn't even thought of.
Enough from me. The TheraFlu is almost gone. Time for bed.
Things are starting to get close to the wire for both of my major projects. The new space is maddeningly close to being finished; the kitchen sink, dishwasher & counters should be completed by tomorrow latest, then there are a couple of tiny build-out projects that - hopefully - will be done before the weekend. Then, I've got a small amount of touch-up painting and a couple of minor projects to complete this weekend before Moving Day on Monday. But as of now, we're about 98% of the way to having the new space completed.
I've finally begun packing up my office, which isn't going to take me very long, but there's also a great deal of sorting, trashing/recycling and packing up to do in the main office as well. Fortunately, my co-workers are handling most of this, but I still have to go through things in storage to decide what we have to keep (financial records mostly), and what we can toss. What's time-consuming is that I'm having to make some sort of trip - to the office supply or hardware store, over to the new space to deal with a delivery - just about every day, so between that and the normal day-to-day work that still needs to get done AND walking people around the office to show them what we have available to "take away" (e.g. the book case in my office that was moved out not ten minutes ago) I just haven't had much time to devote to this part of the move.
Still, things continue to move in a forward direction and despite the rampant insomnia that's been waking me up at around 4:00 a.m. every morning for the past week, I'm feeling reasonably confident that we're going to pull this off - not necessarily without a hitch; that would be too much to ask - but well enough that we should be more-or-less business as usual by mid-week.
