12:58 a.m. - 2003-11-20
Pancakes and Adrenaline
Two quite different days have passed since my last entry, dear diary.
Yesterday it was warm - Chinook induced. Walking outside just required runners and a light jacket. Most of the ice had melted on key streets. Work was productive but frustrating. One type of operational procedure had been split into to about eight smaller but often over-lapping categories. The information, some regulatory or legal, wasn't necessarily filed in the same place for each location and often two or three key pieces of information would have to be duplicated to several files because of the way things had been divided up. A lot of extra paper and space used up not to mention the amount of time it took to locate the physical file since they were randomly assigned to different categories. I went out walking at lunch and came back to find that my headphones, which had been fine when I left, weren't working at all. I rely on the music I listen to to help me focus on the very detail-oriented tasks I do. This was not good. At the end of the day I checked to find out why certain information wasn't represented in the files although I had a lot of specific information in the stacks (and stacks and stacks) of paper that needed to be incorporated into the folders. The response? A printout of several other categories of files each someplace else that would have to be checked. The second printout of all the properties affected runs into the hundreds. I'm supposed to complete all this in three weeks. Guess I'll have to try those power bars for lunch. Walked to the train station at the end of the day and got an adrenaline rush of another kind. Three big, loud fire trucks screamed up to the curb where I and another lady were standing. Firemen jumping off, pulling on their protective gear and running toward the six storey parking garage just behind us. The two of us exchanged one of those "what do we do now" looks and both headed as far from where the firemen were going as we could. Couldn't see any smoke or flames but why take the risk? Anyway, I e-mailed my supervisor just to keep him abreast of the workload issues when I got home. Then I did more election work til bed time.
Today, I got up early - just intuition. The radio - the three DJs chatting about treacherous roads and an official snow accumulation overnight of over 10 cm/4 " (no one ever measures the snow drifts) with the accompanying drop into freezing temperatures. Forecast? More snow and colder temperatures. I thought I heard about -17C/0 F but it really didn't register as I realized I should leave early if I wanted to make it to work with any chance of being on time. Fine. I wasn't certain about the time the first bus of the day was scheduled, so I called teleride. Announcement? Due to treacherous road conditions busses were detoured around my stop - call customer service to find the nearest pick up point. 25 minutes later my call was taken. The very tired woman on the other end just said that they were being updated by e-mail and were quite far behind in the information loop. I told her the routes I could walk to and she finally found one that was confirmed active after another 10 minutes of talking. Out the door I went and just about missed the darn thing. Fortunately the driver was one who recognized me as a regular so he waited while I ran through calf-high snow. The doors opened and I couldn't see how I was going to fit on board. One of my co-workers was squished up against the doors. He reached down and scooped me into the vehicle with no room to breathe. No problem - at least I was going to be able to get to the train. I arrived at my worksite just at start time - not bad, eh?
One of the women I report to and I chatted and I showed her some of the difficulties I was having with the files. She agreed and said she was encountering the same difficulties - would I mind amalgamating all the catergories into one and consolidating all the data for each location. Nope, sounds like a lot of extra work, but that effort at the front end of the exercise will speed things up considerably for the balance of the work and it will be more precise and accurate. Mid-morning I was at the back of the rolling shelves pulling files. All of a sudden one side came swinging at me at a tremendous speed. The lock that should have stopped that from happening hadn't worked. It's hard to break a lifelong habit of not raising your voice in public (ok at home I would raise my voice but that was so I could be heard over six little boys' and their friends racket), but I found enough air to yell "Stop" before I was completely turned into a pancake. A young university student peeked around to see if there was any blood and apologized profusely. That's one way to ensure someone doesn't forget their first introduction to you I guess. I told her not to worry about it and went on with what I was doing. About half an hour later, I looked up and saw one of the engineers peeking around the shelves at me. He disappeared and then the shelves slowly started closing in again. He peeked back around and said he just wanted to make sure he had my attention and lectured me on safety. I wasn't the one who disengaged the locks - twice. But he was funny.
Went out walking at noon - needed the air and I wanted new headphones. I was starting to get a migraine from the eyestrain and my hip and leg were really letting me know just how atrophied the muscles that were injured were. Oh pain. Music distracts me and I usally can ignore it with just that little bit extra help. Worked like a charm. Listened to Brook Benton and Etta James, ummmmm bliss. Then popped in Amr Diab - Egyptian bellydance disco. Well ok fine but I forgot about the pain didn't I? Intuition told me to leave early because of the traffic so I was out of the building about 15 minutes before usual. Good thing. At the train station where I catch the feeder bus to go home a major accident - looked like nearly a dozen emergency vehicles. Bus detour again - we ended up going in a wide loop on two freeways just so we could get back to the regular route from a different approach. Got home about 15 minutes later than I usually would. Doesn't matter though. At least I was in one piece - hope the people in the accident weren't too badly injured. Hard to know.
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