Quo Vado?

Don’t ask about the title, I really don’t know why, it’s the random quote that popped into my head. The workday is thankfully almost over. It wasn’t as productive as I would have liked it to be, but the basic ridiculous scope of my work for the next two weeks lies before me like a black pit of sticky goo. It’s not so bad really, I don’t have this week’s combustible projects - though why we are referred to the combustible department (whether it’s the flammable materials we design for or the breakneck pace we always seem to be working) is becoming less and less a valid question. Now, I’m off to dine w/ an old friend, once I figure out where the restaurant is.

Today’s Oneword: Frontier
I always wanted to go to the wild, wild west - though I probably would have died given my picky eating habits, quick temper and reckless disregard for safety. Guns at thirty paces…

So it1s Tuesday now. I took yesterday off as a MHD, but I don’t really feel any better than I did then. Crazily enough, I do these things and my body gets the signal that I now have time to be sick so today my throat scratches and my eyes hurt and I feel like I’ve been beaten over the head with a 2×4. Oh, well, that’s just how it goes sometimes. I’ll try to have a more coherent and non-whiny update later.

Today’s Oneword: Trivia

I wish I knew more useless information, but if you play trivia games with the right people, you can sometimes think your way out of a quandary. We actually played on Friday night and somehow I’ve become one of those people you have to be careful which team I’m on so that no team has too much advantage.

Continuation: It’s not that I ‘know’ stuff, it’s just that I know alot of little things and the strangest thing stick in my head, like the price of admission to the Nut Museum (which apparently closed in 2002) was a small monetary fee and a nut. I’d heard it from a travel channel program a couple of weeks ago and remembered it for Friday’s final pie piece.

I’m watching one of those movies that you know isn’t the best in the world, but you love as part of your youth. I still occasionally find myself wanting to threaten to gut people with a spoon. My strange admiration for Alan Rickman started here. I picked up the extended version at the Red Circle Boutique this evening. I’d forgotten how much I’d loved this movie, the romp of it all. Ah, well, back to your regularly scheduled program.

It’s morning now, and I have reclaimed the privacy of my cell. Today shouldn’t be too bad; I’m going to spend much of it cleaning up little problems that have crept up over the course of trying to meet a large deadline. Hopefully, by the end of the day I’ll have been able to clear off my desk as well. Right now, a number of projects lay open waiting for me to address issues involving them. There was something nagging my brain that I intended to write about, but alas, I didn’t write it down so no joy on actually expressing it. Have a good Friday ya’ll.

ETA: They didn’t cut my tea this morning! I usually have them mix my tea half sweet half unsweet because here in the pseudo* south people like to die of sugar shock on a regular basis. The tea is too darned sweet, but I can’t stop drinking it. Aaaah!

*Atlanta is in the south and harbors many southern tendencies, but as Alm says, the city itself has been horribly corrupted by the never-ending influx of northerners.

mr.fun ball, guest blogging at Begging the Question, posted today about mix tapes and what makes a good one. I’m not well enough versed in making one to actually give rules, but below is the song list for a compilation set that I’ve been listening to for about a year, it didn’t get finalized until around December - the number two slot was the hardest to fill.

03 one

1. That’s Just About Right - Blackhawk
2. Wave On Wave - Pat Green
3. Honest Questions - Daniel Bedingfield
4. The Cowboy In Me - Tim McGraw
5. With Arms Wide Open - Creed
6. The Impossible - Joe Nichols
7. One Good Love - Rascal Flatts
8. Thank U - Alanis Morissette
9. At The End Of The Day - Kellie Coffey
10. Everywhere - Michelle Branch
11. The Rising - Bruce Springsteen
12. I Can Only Imagine - MercyMe
13. Thank You For Loving Me - Bon Jovi
14. Just What I Do - Trick Pony
    
15. Everything - Lifehouse
16. Unbroken - Tim McGraw
17. Higher - Creed
18. Happy Girl - Martina McBride

Today’s Improptu:

When I was a little girl, we would take a family vacation every summer. Once while we were preparing to tour a building, probably some dead presidents home, I asked Dad, “Why are you giving him money?” “That’s the price of admission,” he replied in a straightforward manner. Like most things my father said, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later I came to understand the importance of the price of admission.

We pay to do all kinds of things in our lives. Some of what we pay for we can easily see like movie thickets, concert tickets, parking tickets and the like. However, much of the time the price of something cannot be seen, I didn’t expect college to cost me confidence, or my job sucking my brain dry, or losing laughter to suppress anger. When was the last time you took account of the price you’ve paid to be where you are in your life today?

While we cannot take back or redo the choices made yesterday or years ago, taking stock of the cost of those choices in hindsight gives each of us an opportunity to acknowledge the unexpected loss, recapture the ideals lost or even become more grateful for the price paid to walk a given path.

So much of my life is spent running to avoid seeing too much, so today I pause to take stock of my current situation and acknowledge the pieces and parts paid to walk this path.

They really need to make headbands that work as well and are as comfortable as my glasses. My hair resembles a wild chaotic mess atop my head and it gets longer every day. It remains mainly off my neck, so it doesn’t bother me too much, but I need to find something other than my glasses to hold it back. The headbands that I have pinch my head way too much and aren’t willing to open further. Pins/clips don’t work because they pull on my head and my hair is too fine. Alm said yesterday that my problem is that my head is just different from everyone elses. It’s more round, and my neck connects to it closer to the back than it does on most people. Argh, remind me why I’m trying this again?

I just spoke to the Cajun about the project that never ends. He didn’t have bad news regarding the project, but he did give me a hard time about the fact that the shop drawings for the project have been on the floor outside my office for a month (possibly more) now. Cajun makes working amusing, at least. While his laid back ways do make me crazy during production, he doesn’t push too hard and always laughs at my bad jokes. Unfortunately for him and his family, their house burned down in early December, so he’s spend much of this year designing and building a new one. I helped out with the engineering as I could, but today he wanted to put two nine inch round ducts through an eleven inch TJI about eight feet long. I told him he needed to talk to his TJI guy.

I work closely with a handful of architects from various companies, and as they come across the path, way I’ll try to color in the lines for Scooter Boy and the rest.

I’m considering calling in sick to work tomorrow. I probably won’t do it, but it was a definite thought as I plodded back to take my shower.  I have wonderful shop drawings to complete over the weekend, and I really need to be doing work on the other projects going out next week, but just the idea of coming in here one more day pains me. Really, next time I book a weekend full of social functions, bonk me over the head with a frying pan.

ETA: My morning read left me wanting to point you all to Mel’s great post on the differences between practice and work, and how identifying things as practice can be interjected into the idea of work. That and she made me want to start back into yoga, though it makes me cry.

We shipped the CC project today for Permit. It should make it through the ATL permit process with few bumps, though there are several pieces of information missing. The contractor knows that there will be stuff added/modified to the plan later to make the plans complete. It works kind of like this, we put a basic set of plans together, trying to account for all the pieces, send them off to be reviewed by the city/county building department and then address their comments, the owner/contractors comments and then send a final construction set. I typically work on low-rise apartment buildings; with this style of construction, the owner is often the contractor. While this owner/contractor setup has drawbacks, it typically gives you a better finished project in the end, because everyone is versed in what they want and what it will take to get there.

In other news, CR sent Alm a viciously nasty e-mail last evening, and it really blew her groove. She showed it to me and now I have to go home and deconstruct it so that I can stop being angry about it. She was honest and took the advice given to her and didn’t lead him on by allowing him to think something could ever come of their relationship, and he calls her a witch. Guys can’t kill ‘em even if you want too…

As for me, I’m going to slide my sandals back on and head home. I hope the evening stays quiet.

Note To Self: Run the Laundry!!!

I know the craze is over, but I have a gMail invite if anyone out  there needs one. Squid didn’t want it.