workiness and other things
once again, this journal has gone stale. *blushes*
the first story to tell ..
last friday afternoon (january 25th) we got a call at work from an old customer of ours ~ he is working at a new place now, a Prestigious Architectural Firm with offices across north america no less ~ and he had a challenge for us. the firm was bidding on a contract to build a hospital, and the presentation was on monday morning ~ they needed twelve sets of their plans printed ~ 133 pages per set at 30 inches by 42, in colour, with holes drilled so they could put them in these special portfolio cases. my boss said we’d do it without missing a beat.
we had enough toner and paper on hand ~ to run the sets in black and white would have taken about four hours, plus maybe half an hour for the drilling ~ we have a hydraulic drill press in the back. in colour, however ~ first of all, the paper for the colour plotters comes only in 24 and 36 inch rolls, so every one of those 1, 595 sheets would have to be trimmed down to be 30 inches .. and then, because of the slower speed of the colour plotters, it was an estimated 40 hours of run time instead, plus the drilling on top of that ..
.. it had easily been a month that i was intending to go but just never made it ~ one of my contact lenses got a tiny tear in it, so i had been limping by, wearing one of my backup lenses in its place, kept in a jar of solution in the cupboard. it was a bit weird and swimmy, but i could still see through it .. kind of .. *shrugs*
i had to go to my optometrist, i was already overdue ~ big job or not, with my schedule, if i didn’t go on the saturday it wouldn’t get done for a whole other week, and that just would not do. n. took the saturday morning shift and so i got up early, wisely ran my laundry first and then made the trek across town by bus, more than half an hour of trip time, and got the new lenses. wore my glasses down. made my way in from there and got to work at about 2:30.
~ all the way i was in amazement at how crisp everything was .. look up at a brick building and i could see every brick, all the way to the top .. read street signs n stuff, clear as a bell .. far out ..
i tagged n. out and kept the ship on course .. stayed until 1am and sent down more on the way out too, so that they would keep running after i left, til the rolls ran out.
what complicated things was that the guys over at the firm were still working on the drawings, and they were feeding them to us as they finished them. by the time i came in again on sunday at about 2, our schedule had gone out the window ~ originally they promised us that we’d have every file by saturday morning, and i was still getting new pages until 9pm sunday night. instead of being relatively simple and straightforward, it got weirder n weirder as it went along ~ more pages were swapped out after errors were found and corrected ones sent over ~ i even caught a mistake myself, one of the sheets had been misnumbered .. all of which of course meant more running time, and physically swapping out pages too, lifting and moving piles of paper around ..
down the stretch, if we were still going to meet the monday morning deadline i would have to stay all night, with both plotters running .. and then some. this one’s goin to overtime.
i was told to order in pizza n pay out of the cash box, and i drank two pots of coffee and had a couple of energy drinks .. and i stayed til the bitter end and got er done.
well, mostly ~ when my boss and my manager came in at 6am, there was still maybe two hours worth of printing left to go. *coughs* i stuck around for a bit and showed em what was what, and as i trimmed a set, with a steel ruler and an exacto knife, my hand holding the ruler was trembling, i was all cramped up. they both saw that and said stop already, go home! i gathered up my stuff and even got a lift when a. came in at 7.
i came back in at 3pm instead of 12:30 ~ by then the others had finished running, trimming and drilling it, and had it delivered already ~ a little later than what we originally agreed on, but still in time enough for their presentation, which reportedly went off without a hitch.
the contact we had at the firm got ten hours of sleep the entire weekend himself, and everyone collectively agreed that we had performed the impossible. i was told that the Big Dog at the firm was so impressed that he said he will switch and make us the Official Printer. scores!
everyone in my company had a hand in it, we all contributed in some way .. and yet everyone looked at me especially as the MVP, like the guy at the end of the rope keepin it planted .. mostly by dint of my overnight i suspect .. aw shucks
so .. tuesday afternoon my boss pulled n. and i aside ~ in order to thank us for a job well done he had tickets for the two of us to see the canucks game that night, against the dallas stars ~ eighth row seats no less, on the blue line across from the benches and close enough to the penalty boxes that we could have heckled and been heard. a total surprise .. uh .. okay .. thanks!
i joked with n. on the walk over to the stadium that i was glad for the opportunity to see dallas star mike modano in person ~ not only is he the scoringest american-born NHL player ever, he is also one year younger than i am, and sometimes i look at him and think i’m not so old .. although i could list many players who were born the same year i was that have retired already. before we went in i scoped out the gift shop and was disappointed not to find any ~ if they’d had one, i’d have got one of them foam #1 fingers ..
tied at 1 after the first period, 3-1 for dallas after the second .. mid-way through the third we and others around us agreed that things were not looking good, and then dallas scored to make it 4-1 .. but then them ol comeback canucks made a game of it, played hard and got to within one in the final minutes ~ everyone was on their feet as time wound down, chanting the dallas goalie’s name, tur-co and go canucks go! .. they even put up a clip of steve nash on the scoreboard, the NBA player from victoria, wearing a canucks jersey and urging everyone to make some noise!! .. and for all that, them nucks couldn’t get that tying goal and thus it ended, 4-3 for dallas.
modano didn’t play for the entire game of course, but whilst he was out there on the ice i kept an eye on him, where he positioned himself and how he read the play. heh we were really close. he scored during the second period, leaning into the shot from just inside the blue line, top corner. i cheered it, and n. laughed, although the guy seated next to me gave me the hairy eyeball. *shrugs*
did i mention that i had a few beers too? yeah.
.. so after all that i didn’t get back to normal until wednesday .. as i ate lunch i realised i hadn’t eaten much more than pizza n protein bars n stadium pretzels since friday .. i was still a bit stiff from the lifting too. my hand was better by the next day.
to finish the thought, this past weekend i made a return trip to my optometrist ~ i had taken his very last pair in stock, but the others came in on wednesday. he himself was not there, instead there was this girl .. well, okay, she was probably in her mid-twenties .. she was seated behind the counter as i walked in. i explained that i was there to pick up the lenses, and she asked my name and got up and went over to look. i couldn’t help but notice that she was really .. curvy .. and she was dressed in such a way as to accentuate that too .. so that i couldn’t not notice ..
she came back over and sat down again. the computer screen was between me and her, and as she entered in that i had picked them up she noticed that they didn’t have my address, so she asked me for it and entered it in there as i told her.
because of the setup and where i was standing, it was as if she was looking at my belly, that’s where her head and gaze were focussed, being seated. i looked down into her face, and to her hands at the keyboard~ heh no ring ~ and as i swept my eyes back up of course i again noticed that she was really curvy and dressed to show it, but not really to show it off .. and then back up to her face ~ and i noticed that as she was typing she was squinting into the monitor, at points squinting hard and even leaning in.
the thought flashed ~ and in that frozen moment i chose not to say anything ..
just to see, i decided to walk back ~ ended up taking just more than an hour n a half. o_O a few blocks in i went by a 7-11 and saw that they had gloves ~ i hadn’t brought mine, and it was cold and bright out .. went in to check em out, and they were only $1.99 so of course i got a pair .. and a sandwich. he scores! they had been stapled together with an industrial-grade stapler, and my work skills came in handy ~ i took out my keys, and instead of tryin to pull the staple out, i turned it over and just bent open the legs, pulled the gloves off.
.. i feel like i want to add more, but seein as the above took a couple sittings to compose, and i haven’t put anything up at all of late, perhaps i’ll leave it there for now .. i thank you for reading all the way to the end ..
the first story to tell ..
last friday afternoon (january 25th) we got a call at work from an old customer of ours ~ he is working at a new place now, a Prestigious Architectural Firm with offices across north america no less ~ and he had a challenge for us. the firm was bidding on a contract to build a hospital, and the presentation was on monday morning ~ they needed twelve sets of their plans printed ~ 133 pages per set at 30 inches by 42, in colour, with holes drilled so they could put them in these special portfolio cases. my boss said we’d do it without missing a beat.
we had enough toner and paper on hand ~ to run the sets in black and white would have taken about four hours, plus maybe half an hour for the drilling ~ we have a hydraulic drill press in the back. in colour, however ~ first of all, the paper for the colour plotters comes only in 24 and 36 inch rolls, so every one of those 1, 595 sheets would have to be trimmed down to be 30 inches .. and then, because of the slower speed of the colour plotters, it was an estimated 40 hours of run time instead, plus the drilling on top of that ..
.. it had easily been a month that i was intending to go but just never made it ~ one of my contact lenses got a tiny tear in it, so i had been limping by, wearing one of my backup lenses in its place, kept in a jar of solution in the cupboard. it was a bit weird and swimmy, but i could still see through it .. kind of .. *shrugs*
i had to go to my optometrist, i was already overdue ~ big job or not, with my schedule, if i didn’t go on the saturday it wouldn’t get done for a whole other week, and that just would not do. n. took the saturday morning shift and so i got up early, wisely ran my laundry first and then made the trek across town by bus, more than half an hour of trip time, and got the new lenses. wore my glasses down. made my way in from there and got to work at about 2:30.
~ all the way i was in amazement at how crisp everything was .. look up at a brick building and i could see every brick, all the way to the top .. read street signs n stuff, clear as a bell .. far out ..
i tagged n. out and kept the ship on course .. stayed until 1am and sent down more on the way out too, so that they would keep running after i left, til the rolls ran out.
what complicated things was that the guys over at the firm were still working on the drawings, and they were feeding them to us as they finished them. by the time i came in again on sunday at about 2, our schedule had gone out the window ~ originally they promised us that we’d have every file by saturday morning, and i was still getting new pages until 9pm sunday night. instead of being relatively simple and straightforward, it got weirder n weirder as it went along ~ more pages were swapped out after errors were found and corrected ones sent over ~ i even caught a mistake myself, one of the sheets had been misnumbered .. all of which of course meant more running time, and physically swapping out pages too, lifting and moving piles of paper around ..
down the stretch, if we were still going to meet the monday morning deadline i would have to stay all night, with both plotters running .. and then some. this one’s goin to overtime.
i was told to order in pizza n pay out of the cash box, and i drank two pots of coffee and had a couple of energy drinks .. and i stayed til the bitter end and got er done.
well, mostly ~ when my boss and my manager came in at 6am, there was still maybe two hours worth of printing left to go. *coughs* i stuck around for a bit and showed em what was what, and as i trimmed a set, with a steel ruler and an exacto knife, my hand holding the ruler was trembling, i was all cramped up. they both saw that and said stop already, go home! i gathered up my stuff and even got a lift when a. came in at 7.
i came back in at 3pm instead of 12:30 ~ by then the others had finished running, trimming and drilling it, and had it delivered already ~ a little later than what we originally agreed on, but still in time enough for their presentation, which reportedly went off without a hitch.
the contact we had at the firm got ten hours of sleep the entire weekend himself, and everyone collectively agreed that we had performed the impossible. i was told that the Big Dog at the firm was so impressed that he said he will switch and make us the Official Printer. scores!
everyone in my company had a hand in it, we all contributed in some way .. and yet everyone looked at me especially as the MVP, like the guy at the end of the rope keepin it planted .. mostly by dint of my overnight i suspect .. aw shucks
so .. tuesday afternoon my boss pulled n. and i aside ~ in order to thank us for a job well done he had tickets for the two of us to see the canucks game that night, against the dallas stars ~ eighth row seats no less, on the blue line across from the benches and close enough to the penalty boxes that we could have heckled and been heard. a total surprise .. uh .. okay .. thanks!
i joked with n. on the walk over to the stadium that i was glad for the opportunity to see dallas star mike modano in person ~ not only is he the scoringest american-born NHL player ever, he is also one year younger than i am, and sometimes i look at him and think i’m not so old .. although i could list many players who were born the same year i was that have retired already. before we went in i scoped out the gift shop and was disappointed not to find any ~ if they’d had one, i’d have got one of them foam #1 fingers ..
tied at 1 after the first period, 3-1 for dallas after the second .. mid-way through the third we and others around us agreed that things were not looking good, and then dallas scored to make it 4-1 .. but then them ol comeback canucks made a game of it, played hard and got to within one in the final minutes ~ everyone was on their feet as time wound down, chanting the dallas goalie’s name, tur-co and go canucks go! .. they even put up a clip of steve nash on the scoreboard, the NBA player from victoria, wearing a canucks jersey and urging everyone to make some noise!! .. and for all that, them nucks couldn’t get that tying goal and thus it ended, 4-3 for dallas.
modano didn’t play for the entire game of course, but whilst he was out there on the ice i kept an eye on him, where he positioned himself and how he read the play. heh we were really close. he scored during the second period, leaning into the shot from just inside the blue line, top corner. i cheered it, and n. laughed, although the guy seated next to me gave me the hairy eyeball. *shrugs*
did i mention that i had a few beers too? yeah.
.. so after all that i didn’t get back to normal until wednesday .. as i ate lunch i realised i hadn’t eaten much more than pizza n protein bars n stadium pretzels since friday .. i was still a bit stiff from the lifting too. my hand was better by the next day.
to finish the thought, this past weekend i made a return trip to my optometrist ~ i had taken his very last pair in stock, but the others came in on wednesday. he himself was not there, instead there was this girl .. well, okay, she was probably in her mid-twenties .. she was seated behind the counter as i walked in. i explained that i was there to pick up the lenses, and she asked my name and got up and went over to look. i couldn’t help but notice that she was really .. curvy .. and she was dressed in such a way as to accentuate that too .. so that i couldn’t not notice ..
she came back over and sat down again. the computer screen was between me and her, and as she entered in that i had picked them up she noticed that they didn’t have my address, so she asked me for it and entered it in there as i told her.
because of the setup and where i was standing, it was as if she was looking at my belly, that’s where her head and gaze were focussed, being seated. i looked down into her face, and to her hands at the keyboard~ heh no ring ~ and as i swept my eyes back up of course i again noticed that she was really curvy and dressed to show it, but not really to show it off .. and then back up to her face ~ and i noticed that as she was typing she was squinting into the monitor, at points squinting hard and even leaning in.
the thought flashed ~ and in that frozen moment i chose not to say anything ..
just to see, i decided to walk back ~ ended up taking just more than an hour n a half. o_O a few blocks in i went by a 7-11 and saw that they had gloves ~ i hadn’t brought mine, and it was cold and bright out .. went in to check em out, and they were only $1.99 so of course i got a pair .. and a sandwich. he scores! they had been stapled together with an industrial-grade stapler, and my work skills came in handy ~ i took out my keys, and instead of tryin to pull the staple out, i turned it over and just bent open the legs, pulled the gloves off.
.. i feel like i want to add more, but seein as the above took a couple sittings to compose, and i haven’t put anything up at all of late, perhaps i’ll leave it there for now .. i thank you for reading all the way to the end ..