My Needleful Blog

Well, it’s not done, but I didn’t expect it to be. K and her mom did completely
shelve all of Bosses #1 and 2, and almost entirely sorted out the other two attorney’s
boxes for unpacking. They knew we had to reset shelves so they didn’t unpack those.

Ran into a minor complication while setting shelves for Boss #3 – power outlet behind
the cabinet that got in the way of where I wanted to put the second to last shelf.
No major, just moved everything up one, but of course I found this out as I was
finishing the second cabinet. Ah well, it was still under an hour at that point.

Resetting and unpacking the fourth attorney took longer than I anticipated because
of the resort, but I was still doing pretty well. Probably about 4 hours total for
both of them.

Then on to supplies and spot cleaning as I went. Made some significant shifts in
locations because of lack of drawers and having opened up a second of the metal
racks. I still want drawers of some kind, though, because there’s so much little
stuff that used to be in drawers and I think is going to get lost otherwise. I’m
going to take a look at Container Store later and see what I can do with elfa or
some other similar modular unit to fit into the under-counter cabinet space.

We also did a final pass-through at the old space. I don’t know if someone did a
pass and brought over the plastic crate that had my gift wrap and cooler packs in
it or if the building decided that was trash, but they weren’t there anymore. If
they show up at the new space, great. If not, no major loss, the gift wrap was the
biggest thing.

We finally left about 6:45. 6 hours yesterday plus 6.5 today. That’ll really help.

Didn’t expect moving to interfere so much with my stitching time this month… My poor hands are quite torn up from all the packing and moving and unpacking, and it isn’t quite over yet!

Especially when knowing better than the other person ends up causing me more work
because they refused to listen.

Turn the clock back about 36 hours. Boss #1 is conferring with the reassembly crew
about the file room shelving. I’ve already over-ridden the floor plan and demanded
two back-to-back rows of three starting at the wall with a 2-panel section and a
3-panel section in other locations. And the guy agreed with me that it made more
sense and was less likely to raise a fire code violation.

Boss #1 doesn’t like the location of the 2-panel, and moves it to a different wall
which just so happens to block the fire klaxon in the file room. Bad thing. Now,
if we never ever ever use that top shelf so the klaxon stays visible, we might get
away with it. (although I’m fully expecting a warning from the fire chief when he
comes to inspect. – and trust me, they do). Boss leaves the other cabinets as is,
though. However, Boss #1 has also prescribed a shelf configuration that didn’t look
right to me as they were just starting – clue #1: way too much open space on the
bottom shelf – and kept telling me that he measured it out, everything was right,
and I was over-reacting. Well, it later proved to leave way too many unused shelves
and supports (clue #2). Now I know we shouldn’t have so many, but what do I know,
right? I only spent how many hours in the file room on a routine basis? So I shut
up and let myself get frustrated at something else.

Well guess what? Today while K and I are unloading boxes, we find absolute proof
that Boss #1 was wrong and I was right – boxes labeled "shelf 5". Boss
#1’s configuration leaves only 6 shelves per cabinet. Plus we lost one cabinet entirely.
So we’re down EIGHTEEN shelves from where we were at the old office. Nope, this
is totally not going to work. That’s three full cabinets at his layout, and there
is no way in hell we can fit 84 shelves worth of files onto only 66 shelves total.

Boss #2 was around for this today, and all I can say is he better be feeling damned
lucky that he’s not #1. If he were, he’d be in deep doo-doo. As it is, Boss #1 is
really up a creek when he finally comes back to the office Monday afternoon. And
I fully expect that Boss #2 warns him about the situation…

So K’s mom, who came down to help us out for the day, went out in search of a hammer
so I could undo all the shelving and reset it correctly. Hammer required because
the construction guy used a rubber mallet to set them in place and there was no
way I could get the center pieces out by manual force alone. At least I got myself
a nice outlet for my anger and aggression.

TWO HOURS of completely wasted time because he couldn’t accept that I knew what
I was talking about. Two hours in which I alone could have easily unpacked another
15 boxes and in which everyone else had to spend sorting instead of unloading so
they didn’t get in my way – and precious little room available for THAT.

I only got 6 cabinets reset – the center ones that hold Bosses #1 and 2’s files.
And the only reason I did those first was because they were the most accessible.
K and her mom stayed after we left and they were going to keep working on those
files.

Oh, and as for the other bosses? As I said, #1 is in NYC. #3 was there when I arrived,
hadn’t been for long because his girlfriend signed in as a visitor about a half
hour before we checked in, and left about an hour and a half later. Boss #2 showed
up about 2:30, left for a haircut shortly after the shelf situation exploded, came
back after K’s mom got me a hammer and left again within an hour. The other secretary
and the bookkeeper? Nothing. So K was there till midnight on Thursday. H and I were
there for 6 hours today, and I bet K and her mom will put in about the same. And
H and I will probably put in about another 6 hours tomorrow.

I am so very tempted to say "screw it", not go to the office tomorrow
and spend the day doing my own housework and errands. But I’m getting overtime and
maybe even doubletime for this, so the money is turning out to be a very persuasive
argument.

Tomorrow I get to move all the boxes away from Boss #3’s cabinets, reset his, and
unpack, and then the same for AER. I’m leaving him for last because he’s changing
his entire scheme from at the old office and I need to be able to focus, and because
we’d already sorted his boxes based on the old layout, so I need to move everything
to reset shelves and resort it all to be reshelved. He may not get done till Monday,
to be honest, and no real skin off my nose if that’s the case.

Okay, so everything is in the new office. At least Ithink so. There were a few very
small pieces when I went for my last load today, and K was supposed to go back.
Maybe H and I will stop by on our way in tomorrow just to be sure.

Spent my entire day unpacking and starting to organize. I can see a probable need
for small drawer space, as I only have one of the type of cabinets I had at the
old place, and a definite need for organizers of some kind for the drawers I do
have. But oh man I have so much storage room… it’s wonderful.

We’ve put all the minute books over my desk, which makes complete sense as I’m really
the only one who goes in them on any regular basis. Unfortunately, they completely
fill all of my overhead cabinets, and I don’t have room for expansion. We’ll have
to see what happens. One of the items on my list of tasks for next week is to put
together a list of all the books I have and have each attorney mark which are active
clients of theirs. I’d like to send the dormant clients to storage, and I suspect
I still have a couple of NMG’s books despite his claims that he’d marked all of
his.

I still have a couple unused legal-size drawers, so I definitely have room for other
stuff, it’s just that books on their spines (or on the open edges) is not a good
way of storing them. So I’m really hoping to avoid that particular plan.

I managed to locate all the boxes for the will vault today and that’s fully unpacked
and back to normal. One fax machine is plugged in and working. (The other will be
once I can clear some counter space). I’m going to shift the location of the postage
meter slightly, I think, to accommodate where we have space for mail bins. And we
got about a half dozen boxes of file room unpacked.

K and I are going to work tomorrow to get the file room finished off. H is going
to come with us, I’ll set her to unfolding boxes first and then we’ll see what’s
next on the list for her. A couple of the bosses will also be in to organize their
own areas and probably catch up on work they missed over the last couple days for
the move.

There is an end in sight. It’s just at the far end of a pretty long tunnel. And
so far there’s no sign of the inevitable forgotten necessity… a miracle!

I haven’t stitched in a full week, maybe a bit more. My hands are really badly abraded
from all the packing and unpacking and handling of paper stuff which has sucked
all moisture out of me. So until this is done and I can get my fingertips (at a
minimum) back in shape, I’m putting all of it on hold. Not like I have a shortage
of books to keep me occupied in the meantime…

Moving Day. And boy was it a day.

First my inbound train was late. I shoulda drove. I almost did. Even almost told
C to stay home in the morning and I’d put M on the bus. But noooooooooo. I decided
to save the money on gas and parking and trust that I’d get out at a decent hour
since the guys claimed they saw no reason to stay late.

Then the network guys want to take the server and workstations down at 10 am. Uh.
No. Not gonna work. After much deliberation, we finally agree on 1:30.

Then the coffee service guy shows up to swap machines – but has no knowledge of
the fact that the new machine is going to a different location than the source of
the old one. Because. He. Didn’t. Read. His. Service. Ticket. So we finally get
that straightened out. He takes down the old machine – leaves us the carafes and
the filter basket, though, not sure if that was intentional. We go to the new office.
He has no copper tubing with him. Specifically ordered copper tubing, confirmed
during three different conversations with our sales person and two different service
department reps. He also doesn’t have PVC or anything else with him, nor does he
have new carafes or filter basket. So he goes down to his truck. And I wait. and
I wait. And after about a half hour, I finally bail. I figure he can come back to
233 for a signature at this rate. As I’m walking out, I see him heading into an
elevator in a different bank. But I’m not stopping, I’m ticked and I’m tired and
I have too much work to do to be sitting around waiting for him. I go back nearly
an hour later and he’s still there. Finally, over 2 hours from his first arrival,
he finishes up. Grr.

Then the computers come down and B1 tells me to go over to 111 with the computer
guys so they know where the freight elevators are at. Okay, no prob, I grab a few
boxes while I’m at it. Freight at 233, easy peasy. Freight at 111, however? Entry
is locked, the elevator is down. Uh, this isn’t good. So security points us to the
garage elevator – we can get into the parking garage from the lobby? score! – and
we go up through passenger. On the return from the second such trip, we are told
that freight is again working. Good. This was about 3:00.

Lots of hauling, lots of packing, lots of aches and pains. But B1 orders pizza for
everyone late in the afternoon knowing that nobody really got a break all day. That
helped.

Couple more runs. When we took #2 after pizza, the doors to freight were locked
again. I went up to lobby and asked them to page Dennis because we’re now after
4:00 and we have the elevator reserved and exclusive for the rest of the night.
Turns out that the computer guys told him that "this is our last run"
while taking the servers, which was interpreted as "CRZ is finished".
Uh. No. Anyway….

5:30 – my last of the day because I really should be on my way to the train by now
but I agreed to stay a little longer. K and I go over with the butcher block cart
full of kitchen supplies and dishes. No sign of Dennis when the elevator opens,
but I’m tired and not thinking entirely straight, and K has been up and down so
many times that she’s sure she knows what she’s doing. Hell, it’s just hit the close
doors and then our floor, right? Well…………

WE GOT STUCK IN THE FRAGGING ELEVATOR FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES!!!!!

Elevator doors close. We go to 5. We stop. Call light is on for 5, so I can understand
why we stop. Doors don’t open, though. K hits open, no response. We sit for a bit.
We go up . We stop at 12. Both lights are on for 12, so okay. But doors don’t open.
K hits open button, no response. K hits close button, no response. We wait a bit.
K finally hits the call button, by now we’re getting a bit punchy giggly, it’s been
about 10 minutes so far. After a few minutes of everyone talking over each other,
we finally get the message through that we’re inside and it’s not moving. Suddenly,
it goes down to plaza, but doors still don’t open. Another call. I hear Dennis on
the other side, he knows it’s us. (There’s a camera, he probably looked first).
He’s telling us to push buttons, the lady on the security com is telling us to not
push buttons. We’re getting really giddy, I’m almost to the point where I’m going
to start tearing from laughing so hard. Security lady thinks I’m panicking and starts
a running commentary which makes it impossible to hear Dennis. and I’m laughing
so hard I can’t tell her that I’m okay, I’m not scared, I’m not worried, I’m just
stuck. I call first B1 to warn him that freight is non-functional again and then
C to let him know I’m obviously going to be a lot later than anticipated. He gets
pissed cause "you have no right to be joking about this". Uh? WTF????
I’m borderline hysterical (although I didn’t quite realize it till the adrenaline
started to wear off) and the only reason I’m not curled in a corner is cause I’m
not alone in here (again, something I didn’t realize till later). And I’m somehow
wrong for dealing with it in the only way I can??? Finally after 45 minutes total
time, Dennis gets the door pried open and we escape. Work our way around to passenger
and as we get to our bank, B1 walks up with a handful of paintings. And right behind
us are Dennis and two engineers, all of whom are unbelievably apologetic and practically
fawning over us. I’m still high on adrenaline at this point.

We get our load dumped off, head back to 233. Security tells us that they’re padding
up a regular elevator for us to use until they get freight running again and that
a tech from the elevator company is already on his way. They think they’ll be fixed
by 7:00, which is our estimate for when ABC shows up at the dock with our truckloads.
But if not, they have #18 ready. So K goes off with her to make whatever arrangements
they need, B1 and I return to 233. Tell everyone about freight and the (hopefully)
temporary arrangement. I finally get out at 6:20.

Ended up on the 6:50 train that blows past my stop but is close enough for C to
pick me up, and it gets there 20 minutes earlier than if I’d been on the 55. Except
that it decides to stop and wait for 10 minutes for no apparent reason, so I’m late
yet again. And he’s not happy. Well, okay, I can understand, but it’s not like I
planned it or could control it, and I certainly can’t tell him to come later when
the damned engineers won’t tell us anything, including how late we are when we do
get moving again. WhatEVER.

Tonight was also Family Fun Night for H’s school. So as soon as C drops us off,
we load into our car and head over to Enchanted Castle. I got to meet H’s new boyfriend
(!!!!) and his mother. Seems like a nice kid, mom is definitely nice. And they live
about a block away. Yeah, I can deal with this, I suppose. At least till I start
getting any inkling of anything untoward. So I play cool and let them go off on
their own, but we’re still within reasonable eyesight range at all times. Just in
case.

Get home, get kids in bed, and plop in front of puter. No music, no movie, no stitching.
Just vegging out and not moving out of this seat till bedtime. Man I hope my muscles
don’t all lock up in my sleep. I am gonna be so sore as it is… wish I still had
some Vicodin left over.

Yep, they were definitely draining. New batts in now and boy am I a happy surfer…

Okay, first… we got the new computers installed over the weekend. I ended up getting
a new 17" flatscreen, which I wasn’t expecting. The other secretary was very
vocal about wanting one, and the guys decided that it made no sense for the part-timers
to have new monitors for two days a week and leave us with the bulky ones, so we
got the new ones and our old monitors are going to the PTers. Whatever. I really
didn’t care either way – although now that I have it, they’ll have to pry it out
of my cold dead fingers LOL.

So far everything seems to be working well. The guys had some issues with Outlook
customizations that they just expected would be there already. I can see being unhappy
that their favorites weren’t ported, but they’re getting all new versions of everything,
I don’t know that a profile backup would have worked to carry over signature lines
and return receipt requests and stuff like that. And I have far too much on my plate
to be setting up their stuff again, so I told them that they just have to wait cause
I don’t know their version of Outlook and I have to do it hands-on if they expect
it to be from me.

And I’ve inherited the backup tape task. No huge deal, except for actually remembering
to check it every morning and change the tape every evening. And somehow I managed
to be granted with admin rights… the tech had me deleting unwanted files off the
server drives so we didn’t have so much stuff being backed up that we didn’t need.
Lots of ancient files from the three that left. Stuff that hadn’t been touched since
the Great Server Crash of 2004 (cause the last mod dates were the weekend the new
old server – the one that was just replaced – was installed) Boss #1 told me that
anything of the G’s that hadn’t been accessed since that date was automatically
eligible for zapping, so I gleefully ripped a swath through directories that should
never have existed in the first place. It looks like one of them had been using
their local drive for everything up to that point and the IT moron we’d had at the
time just dumped it all to the server for who-knows-what-reason. Maybe he got a
new puter at about the same time. Which would mean his secy got the new puter and
he got her old one. And come to think of it, I do remember she was the first of
all of us to get a replacement, so maybe that’s exactly what it was. not that it
matters anymore beyond my mid-day entertainment… LOL

Had to go to Mom’s after work to rescue M. Cut down a bunch of lilacs while I was
there…. my bedroom smells so yummy now. I lurve lurve lurve lilacs. Mungo seems
to think that i brought home a salad bar for her. And yes, I’ve already checked
with the Cat Fanciers Association’s website and they are not listed as being dangerous
to cats. And now I have a good site to use as a reference for future acquisitions.
I just hope I can nurse my spider babies back to health now that they’ve become
salad.

After dinner, we ran out to Target for batteries. Shoulda been a quick $5 run, right?
Whoops…. Came home with Rent movie soundtrack, a keychain USB drive that was on
clearance for being cased in a really ugly shade of lime green leather (I’m thinking
of putting the blog on the keychain so I can blog from work directly rather than
via email, if not, I can still use it for data storage), a Sony Discman in pearl
and pink that was on clearance (only one there, no idea why, but only 25 bucks!)
that will be for H if she can keep up her chores, Pooh’s Grand Adventure on DVD,
some trinkets for my secret stitcher victim, some bath things for myself, some gardening
tools that were in their dollar bins, and oh yeah the batteries. Almost forgot those,
too. That would have really sucked. LOL

So when we got home, I put Rent on the computer jukebox so I could rip it out for
my MP3, and I’ll burn a traveling copy for H. I don’t want her taking the original
on the schoolbus. And now here it is the wee hours of the morning already… where
has this day gone???

Oh and the post title? Must get that movie on my Netflix queue…

Okay, my mouse is rerally starting to get on my nerves…

I ordered a pair of Labtec wireless keyboard and mouse combos (it was a Two-fer-Tuesday
package deal) from Woot about a month ago. Already, the mouse is seriously losing
responsiveness, to the point where it’s interfering with my ability to play games
online. It loses its connection with the RF receiver whenever I’m idle for 5 minutes
or so, and recently has started to lose signal WHILE I"M WORKING. It stops
short of where I want it to go and then suddenly jumps beyond. It doesn’t recognize
mouseclicks consistently.

I’ve got to get more batteries to see if that’s the problem. I didn’t realize I
was completely out of AAs. When I swap the batteries to the other mouse, I have
the exact same problems. So it may in fact be battery, or it may be that either
the mice or the receiver are crap. But I’m not having keyboard problems (at least
not related to being wireless LOL, I’m typing for crap lately on my own thankyouverymuch)

So if it doesn’t turn out to be low battery – and gee wouldn’t it be nice if there
was a light telling me the battery was low like there is on the keyboard? – then
I’m going to have to buy yet another friggin mouse. If I do, I’m not going wireless
with it, though, just optical. In fact, maybe I can snag one of the extras from
the office now that everyone’s getting new machines and we’re about to have an abundance
of excess equipment. Maybe I ought to grab an extra mouse or two anyway just as
a precaution.

In happier news…. I took the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry today.
Got the family membership, but they wouldn’t let me put Mom on as the second adult.
I’ll try calling in a few months and tell them that she moved in with me or something
to see if I can get that changed, but I’ll leave it for now. I put C’s name down
as second adult so that I can bring two other adults without paying. I get listed
adults up to two and "all children" plus one guest on each visit.

We went to the Game On exhibit, and i have one more free pass to that if I can get
there by next Sunday, which is when it closes for this go-round. I say that because
this is already "version 2.0", and I fully expect that it’ll return yet
again. I’d so love to play hooky from work and go play video games all day, but
I know it just isn’t going to happen this week.

It is a little saddening to see how many exhibits are "undergoing maintenance"
each time we go – and more importantly, how many of those exhibits have had the
maintenance signs on them for a year or more. When I was a kid, both parking (openaire
single level paved lot) and admission were free, and the only paid exhibit (that
I can remember) was to tour the U-505 submarine, and then there was the Omnimax
theater that was a separate fee. Back then, an out-of-service exhibit didnt’ gall
so much because they were free everything and their income was almost exclusively
from memberships (and what advantage that when it’s free to get in anyway?) and
charitable donations. Plus I was a kid and there were so many other things to grab
my attention if something was "down". Now they have an underground multilevel
parking garage, at a fee of 12 bucks a visit if you aren’t a member, entry fee can
be anywhere from 7 for a kid with no special exhibits up to about 30 for an adult
with all current paid exhibits (at the moment there are three – U-505, Game On and
DaVinci). And they still don’t have enough money to fix what’s broke. Now that I’m
a member, I hope I have a little bit of a voice and can see if I can get any kind
of information. I’m sure it’s a case of funding, and I wonder if gifts can be made
that specify that the gift be used only to repair and maintain certain exhibits
rather than daily operations or for new exhibits. Kind of like sponsoring a specific
attraction or something. I would totally consider that a worthy use of a charitable
donation and would definitely keep that in mind for tax refund money if it were
possible (and deductible LOL)

I’ve officially crossed into Page 1 territory!

Because of the size of the original chart and the way I photocopied it, pages 1-4
all have a section of overlap on each (and a small section that actually appears
on all four pages), as did pages 5-8. Today I crossed the line into what appears
on page 1 as well as page 3. Only by a few stitches, but the line has been breached.

Overall, it’s been a quiet day. Everyone slept in (I woke up before the kids on
a weekend!?!?!), we did our grocery shopping and hit the used bookstore, and I stitched.
Bought Narnia, so we watched that, and after they went to bed, I watched Blade:Trinity.
Of course, the fact that I "watch" and stitch at the same time guarantees
a repeat performance just so I can try and catch what I missed befoer LOL.

Tomorrow (well, today): laundry, cleaning, maybe a run for some flowers and potting
soil, and of course more Lady and more (or repeated) movies.