The carpet that nearly caused heart failure on Monday arrived today and is being installed. I was here at 0630 for that, starting my day with tracking down a dust mask so I could sweep up the Monument Crud - the stuff that wasn't quite ground into the carpet. That was a nasty task because it's been about twenty years since that carpet was installed so there was a lot of crud. I did have the foresight to bring a fresh shirt which was a good thing. By the time I finished with the sweeping and cleaning up I had black smudges on the white shirt. No idea how they got there or where they came from, but it's a magnetic effect that I have at times like that. Kind of like Charles Schultz's Pig Pen character.
As for the carpet, it's looking really good. Now, following my Executive Decision of the other day, I hope everyone else is pleased. If not, too bad because we're not undoing it.
I'm also catching up on all of the invoices I've let collect for the past week. That was a huge task - a stack about five inches thick taking up a goodly portion of my desk. I took most of yesterday to get them coded and most of today to get them entered, and I still have several batches to go through. By two-thirty I should be done, which will be nice. Naturally, though, more arrived today but they're just going to have to wait.
Along the way I solved a dilemma that was bugging me: How do I know, among the thousands upon thousands of pages that came out of the file drawer last week, which are supposed to be here and which are supposed to be in the storage locker? It took some doing, but I downloaded the records for what's been closed and am now going through the thousands upon thousands of pages and comparing each to this list I've created. It's a worthwhile exercise because while many are open and should be here at my desk, many others were closed last year or the year before and shouldn't be here. I've already whittled the stack down by a solid three inches. If I can keep going at this pace, I should have a manageable stack to wrestle with. One I fervently hope will fit in the rolling file bin that I have, instead of in the rolling file bin and the other bin that's sitting on the floor here.
Of course, that stack of closed items also needs to be organized so that if we do need to find something, we can. That'll take about a day of intense concentration.
In addition to that, I solved another problem. How do I make the documents I need approved readily accessible to the reviewers? Ah ha! Work with IT to create a shared drive accessible only to those who need access. I can 'park' copies of the documents that are pending there, shoot the guys and gals an e-mail telling them they have stuff waiting and please stop by to take a look. That way I'm not blowing up their e-mail inboxes and phones with huge files. So far it seems to be working. Early days, yet, since I only got this started two days ago, but I have been getting responses and a couple of things have 'gone away'.
All-in-all it's been a good week. I'm up to my ears in projects and hanging things - like these papers I have all over the place - and I'm loving it. It's exactly how I like to work.
By the time I go home tonight, I expect the carpet will be down and the spaces will look beautiful, my desk will be clear of processed invoices, and I will have another bite taken out of the other work.
Looking farther than that, my next hope is that the powers that be will take a look at the new carpet and realize how shabby the rest of the building looks by comparison. We have blue carpet long-since turned black on the stairs. At the edge of the upstairs landing that ends and meets the brown carpet that meets the other blue carpet that morphs back into brown carpet so it can become blue again down the back stairs. It's a mess! Of course the bright pink duct tape covering up the holes and tears adds a bit of a festive touch...
If we could get some more spaces done, it might actually look like a good place to work when we bring visitors into the office.
The next thing is the forlorn Stack that's still sitting here on the corner of my desk. And the client's website I'm supposed to be rootling around inside 'when I have time'. Now there's a joke. When do I have time? I dunno. I'll find it, probably next week, once I feel like I've got a little room to breathe.
This week I've likened life to standing under Niagara Falls with a Dixie cup and trying to catch the entire flow. Not realistic but you do the best you can and who can complain about that?
So that's my week and that's why this has been hit and miss. Tomorrow, though I have an interesting piece about politics and the world economy. I hope you'll drop by.
Have a wonderful day!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Showing posts with label Carpet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carpet. Show all posts
Friday, February 12, 2016
Thursday, January 7, 2016
It's A BEE-U-TEE-FUL Day In Paradise!
The rain has passed through and things are looking up on the water front here in Northern California. It's not back by any stretch of the imagination, but the lake shown below (Lake Folsom up near Sacramento) has risen by 28.5 feet this winter:
That helps a lot, but there's still water table depletion that has to be restored. Smaller lakes and ponds are still leaking out into the aquifers so they still look dry despite the rain we've been getting. If we can get more and more and more through April we'll be in pretty good shape for the summer. Then we'll need at least another winter like this one if we're going to recover much at all.
This morning coming toward work I looked up and it looked as if Mt. St. Helena had a dusting of snow on it. I was far enough away that I thought it might be clouds, but they just stayed there and I wondered. Coming across the hills I hit the ridge above the northern Napa Valley, a perfect view of the mountain and, sure enough! There was snow - a dusting that's probably gone by now, the time I'm writing this hours later, but it was there and it was pretty.
We are looking at more rain over the next few days - into next week if the weather gurus have it right, so more chances of snow and filling up of dried out things.
Aside from that, looking inside the four walls, my billings are caught up for the moment and I've been able to turn attention to other things. Not quite at The Stack, but close. Perhaps by this afternoon, after I get my Gantt chart project done? Hmm.
I do have a lot of quickie things in The Desktop Stack that I can probably get done in a matter of hours. Then I have The Box No. One Stack. That's a box of stuff I inherited a couple of months ago that I haven't done more than glance through. I'll combine it with The Box No. Two Stack that arrived just before Christmas. That Stack is small and has interesting looking keys intermixed. And they're real keys - as in they fit in locks - but they're more interesting than your garden-variety keys and I'm curious as to what they might go with. Uh oh. I hope it's not the equipment we recently auctioned off. Hmm. That is worth a phone call.
From there I can swing into The Box Nos. Three and Four Stacks. Those are things I received almost a year-and-a-half ago. I pretty well know what's in those, I just have to organize it and make sure stuff isn't inter-mixed with other stuff. All part of the job and part of the interest since I do occasionally find interesting things. Like those intriguing keys I have to call about.
We got the carpet laid yesterday and it is gorgeous! I was worried about the color. It's predominately red and gray - kind of like marbled meat if I'm honest - and I was concerned that once it was laid I was going to have a serious case of buyer's remorse. After all, I didn't want the room to look like a crime scene bathed in blood.
The carpet guys talked to me and I talked to them and we agreed on how to lay it out to minimize the bloodbath appearance and it came out beautifully.
See, I worry about this stuff now after my experience thirty years ago. Then I was office manager for a company that occupied the entire floor of a downtown San Francisco office building. Our landlord's representative came in one day because she was updating the elevator lobbies in the building and wanted to change things up from floor to floor to make it more interesting. She showed me a little swatch and I said "that's nice" and she showed me the carpet samples and I said "that's nice". What I did not do was visualize the end result. Two weeks later I got to the building, got onto the elevator. A few floors later the doors opened and... I swear to god it looked like a whorehouse! It was horrible.
The "soft pink" that she had showed me on the little paint swatch? Glaring! The royal purple carpet had a band of pink running through it as a border. In the context of someone's private home (providing it's a brothel) it might work. In the context of a professional office building? NO! A resounding NO.
I immediately got on the phone to her (as soon as I got into the office and to my desk since this was the days before cell phones) and said NO! She came and took a look and agreed. A week went by and I refused, flat-out, to get off the elevator on that floor. Instead, I would go to a different floor and take the stairs because I didn't want to be associated in any way, shape or form with that mess. Finally, the weekend after I nearly had heart failure, they came in and repainted the walls plain white. The pink was so glaring it still showed through, offering a soft, shell-like pink glow, but it was at least tolerable. Not the full fix since the carpet was still there, but at least I didn't want to die of mortification every time I got off the elevator.
After that I know to visualize BIG. Get the big paint swatch or, better still, get a sample you can put on an unobtrusive spot on the wall so you can get a sense of what the finished product will look like.
This time around, when we were selecting the tile, I got squares - full-on two-foot x two-foot squares in a couple of different colors and styles. Then I had my roomies weigh in and we all agreed on the color. Then it was the execution and, as I say, I did not want the executed room to look as if an execution had taken place. And it doesn't. It's very nice and goes well with the floor in the rest of the space which is brick reddish concrete - a bit redder and darker than the terracotta of a Spanish tile floor.
Other than that, things are quiet and happy and calm. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm reveling in the situation now.
Here's wishing you a happy, quiet and calm day, too.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
 |
| www.dailymail.co.uk |
This morning coming toward work I looked up and it looked as if Mt. St. Helena had a dusting of snow on it. I was far enough away that I thought it might be clouds, but they just stayed there and I wondered. Coming across the hills I hit the ridge above the northern Napa Valley, a perfect view of the mountain and, sure enough! There was snow - a dusting that's probably gone by now, the time I'm writing this hours later, but it was there and it was pretty.
We are looking at more rain over the next few days - into next week if the weather gurus have it right, so more chances of snow and filling up of dried out things.
Aside from that, looking inside the four walls, my billings are caught up for the moment and I've been able to turn attention to other things. Not quite at The Stack, but close. Perhaps by this afternoon, after I get my Gantt chart project done? Hmm.
I do have a lot of quickie things in The Desktop Stack that I can probably get done in a matter of hours. Then I have The Box No. One Stack. That's a box of stuff I inherited a couple of months ago that I haven't done more than glance through. I'll combine it with The Box No. Two Stack that arrived just before Christmas. That Stack is small and has interesting looking keys intermixed. And they're real keys - as in they fit in locks - but they're more interesting than your garden-variety keys and I'm curious as to what they might go with. Uh oh. I hope it's not the equipment we recently auctioned off. Hmm. That is worth a phone call.
From there I can swing into The Box Nos. Three and Four Stacks. Those are things I received almost a year-and-a-half ago. I pretty well know what's in those, I just have to organize it and make sure stuff isn't inter-mixed with other stuff. All part of the job and part of the interest since I do occasionally find interesting things. Like those intriguing keys I have to call about.
We got the carpet laid yesterday and it is gorgeous! I was worried about the color. It's predominately red and gray - kind of like marbled meat if I'm honest - and I was concerned that once it was laid I was going to have a serious case of buyer's remorse. After all, I didn't want the room to look like a crime scene bathed in blood.
The carpet guys talked to me and I talked to them and we agreed on how to lay it out to minimize the bloodbath appearance and it came out beautifully.
See, I worry about this stuff now after my experience thirty years ago. Then I was office manager for a company that occupied the entire floor of a downtown San Francisco office building. Our landlord's representative came in one day because she was updating the elevator lobbies in the building and wanted to change things up from floor to floor to make it more interesting. She showed me a little swatch and I said "that's nice" and she showed me the carpet samples and I said "that's nice". What I did not do was visualize the end result. Two weeks later I got to the building, got onto the elevator. A few floors later the doors opened and... I swear to god it looked like a whorehouse! It was horrible.
The "soft pink" that she had showed me on the little paint swatch? Glaring! The royal purple carpet had a band of pink running through it as a border. In the context of someone's private home (providing it's a brothel) it might work. In the context of a professional office building? NO! A resounding NO.
I immediately got on the phone to her (as soon as I got into the office and to my desk since this was the days before cell phones) and said NO! She came and took a look and agreed. A week went by and I refused, flat-out, to get off the elevator on that floor. Instead, I would go to a different floor and take the stairs because I didn't want to be associated in any way, shape or form with that mess. Finally, the weekend after I nearly had heart failure, they came in and repainted the walls plain white. The pink was so glaring it still showed through, offering a soft, shell-like pink glow, but it was at least tolerable. Not the full fix since the carpet was still there, but at least I didn't want to die of mortification every time I got off the elevator.
After that I know to visualize BIG. Get the big paint swatch or, better still, get a sample you can put on an unobtrusive spot on the wall so you can get a sense of what the finished product will look like.
This time around, when we were selecting the tile, I got squares - full-on two-foot x two-foot squares in a couple of different colors and styles. Then I had my roomies weigh in and we all agreed on the color. Then it was the execution and, as I say, I did not want the executed room to look as if an execution had taken place. And it doesn't. It's very nice and goes well with the floor in the rest of the space which is brick reddish concrete - a bit redder and darker than the terracotta of a Spanish tile floor.
Other than that, things are quiet and happy and calm. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm reveling in the situation now.
Here's wishing you a happy, quiet and calm day, too.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)