60-hour week!
So last week, since the junior staff is still, um, JUST ME, I was the only properly trained person available to do a full week of sampling at a school in Boston. We're dealing with PCBs in the caulk that was used to seal up the expansion joints, window frames, sections of brick... basically everything on the outside of the building. All that caulking material will be removed and replaced over the summer. This past week was school vacation, so it's a perfect opportunity to test some of the removal methods to figure out what works best on the different kinds of caulk. It was pretty fun, now that I think about it - got to learn several new sampling methods and EPA rules I didn't know before, and got to ride in a cherry-picker type lift that hoisted me up to the top (third) floor of the building to take samples of various materials.
It also meant that I worked a 60-hour week. It's basically two hours from my apartment to get to the office, get the company truck with all the gear in it, and fight the Boston traffic to get to the school. Furthermore, I had to be AT the site at 7 am (on the plus side, I saw 5 out of 5 sunrises that week!). Stomping around in steel-toed boots (which are HEAVY!) from 7 am to 5 pm, doing LOTS of driving in a big creaky van full of clanking equipment, lugging sampling air units (big vacuum things!) and sample jars around, writing more labels and lab forms than I could have even imagined, it all added up to a VERY tired me by the end of the week! And I went straight to dance class/rehearsal three of those five evenings. Eeeeeek! To say I was exhausted by Friday would be the understatement of the century.
On the other hand, it afforded me a great opportunity to feel very accomplished. We were taking samples of not only the caulk, but also the brick, mortar, concrete window frames and sills, and other building materials that were touching the caulk to see if they are contaminated with PCBs too. My manager was out at the Site with me on Thursday, we went over what had been done earlier in the week, and he gave me a list of the additional samples he wanted. No joke, the list was about 90 items. The list was very complicated; there are different kinds of light and dark caulk, two different types of brick, several different kinds of concrete, etc. So he needed samples in different combinations: rough brick that's touching dark caulk, rough brick that's touching light caulk, glazed brick with light and dark, painted concrete, unpainted concrete.... well, you get the idea. And this HAD to get done by end of day Friday, because we can't do this kind of work when the kids are at the school.
So in order to get this done in the day and a half I had left, there had to be a really efficient plan. When the construction guys doing the removal work (who are really really cool!) take me up in the lift to get samples, it takes a good amount to time to get the lift placed just so against the building, keeping the floor level, getting close enough to work on the brick without scratching against the building too badly. It's a delicate process, and each change of placement requires several minutes to achieve. So I'd have to try and get all the samples I needed from as few spots on the building as possible.
This is when I got to put my event-planning and chaos-coordinating skills to work again, and I have to say, I'm really freaking proud of myself. Thursday afternoon while the guys were working on another section of the wall, I sat down and looked at the four wall faces that I would be sampling. Figuring out where the rough and glazed brick come together, where the different kinds of caulked joints were placed, how the different kinds of windows were distributed, I put together a plan that covered every single sample my manager wanted and needed just three or four "stops" with the lift on each wall face.
We did the first wall on Thursday and the other three on Friday. And DUDE did it go well! On the first wall we got 31 samples in just under 90 minutes!! I was thrilled. Friday we did the other three walls, and we were completely finished by 2:30. It was almost miraculous! I beat the worst Friday traffic, had time to organize my notes at the office and catch up on some paperwork and e-mails that had been ignored all week. It was great!
So today I got to do the labels and fill out the lab forms for all 130+ samples I'd gotten since Wednesday. Thank heavens for printable labels with Word templates, or I think my hand would have staged a mutiny for overwork at handwriting!! But it all got done. Despite the complete and total exhaustion that set in Friday night, it felt good to essentially be in charge at the site (the guys did what I told them to!) and to know exactly what needed to happen for the sampling. The three guys on the crew were also SO cool, which really added to the experience. So funny, so good at what they do. All-around awesome. :-)
One other nice side-benefit to this week was the fact that, because this was field time instead of office time, I get paid for the hours in excess of 40 even though I'm salaried. And it comes just after my new raise (!!!!) takes effect, so it's at my new higher rate. Life is very, very good in that sense. :-)
And, of course, there is nothing that can happen in a work-week that Sarah can't heal on a weekend. :-) Once I got up to Smith on Saturday she bought me yummy pastry and generally let us both have a good lot of time spent horizontal, in zen relaxing hours of "easy silence" (to quote the Dixie Chicks). Well, that's when she wasn't making me laugh, as she never fails to do. :-)
The show is in four days, my parents arrive in three, and everybody in the company seems to feel pretty good, very ready, but calm. It's been a surprisingly zen week-before-tech, actually, almost eerie - it's hard for me to believe the show's really almost here! Of course, tomorrow is the first night of tech, and then I'm SURE I'll believe it for real!!
It also meant that I worked a 60-hour week. It's basically two hours from my apartment to get to the office, get the company truck with all the gear in it, and fight the Boston traffic to get to the school. Furthermore, I had to be AT the site at 7 am (on the plus side, I saw 5 out of 5 sunrises that week!). Stomping around in steel-toed boots (which are HEAVY!) from 7 am to 5 pm, doing LOTS of driving in a big creaky van full of clanking equipment, lugging sampling air units (big vacuum things!) and sample jars around, writing more labels and lab forms than I could have even imagined, it all added up to a VERY tired me by the end of the week! And I went straight to dance class/rehearsal three of those five evenings. Eeeeeek! To say I was exhausted by Friday would be the understatement of the century.
On the other hand, it afforded me a great opportunity to feel very accomplished. We were taking samples of not only the caulk, but also the brick, mortar, concrete window frames and sills, and other building materials that were touching the caulk to see if they are contaminated with PCBs too. My manager was out at the Site with me on Thursday, we went over what had been done earlier in the week, and he gave me a list of the additional samples he wanted. No joke, the list was about 90 items. The list was very complicated; there are different kinds of light and dark caulk, two different types of brick, several different kinds of concrete, etc. So he needed samples in different combinations: rough brick that's touching dark caulk, rough brick that's touching light caulk, glazed brick with light and dark, painted concrete, unpainted concrete.... well, you get the idea. And this HAD to get done by end of day Friday, because we can't do this kind of work when the kids are at the school.
So in order to get this done in the day and a half I had left, there had to be a really efficient plan. When the construction guys doing the removal work (who are really really cool!) take me up in the lift to get samples, it takes a good amount to time to get the lift placed just so against the building, keeping the floor level, getting close enough to work on the brick without scratching against the building too badly. It's a delicate process, and each change of placement requires several minutes to achieve. So I'd have to try and get all the samples I needed from as few spots on the building as possible.
This is when I got to put my event-planning and chaos-coordinating skills to work again, and I have to say, I'm really freaking proud of myself. Thursday afternoon while the guys were working on another section of the wall, I sat down and looked at the four wall faces that I would be sampling. Figuring out where the rough and glazed brick come together, where the different kinds of caulked joints were placed, how the different kinds of windows were distributed, I put together a plan that covered every single sample my manager wanted and needed just three or four "stops" with the lift on each wall face.
We did the first wall on Thursday and the other three on Friday. And DUDE did it go well! On the first wall we got 31 samples in just under 90 minutes!! I was thrilled. Friday we did the other three walls, and we were completely finished by 2:30. It was almost miraculous! I beat the worst Friday traffic, had time to organize my notes at the office and catch up on some paperwork and e-mails that had been ignored all week. It was great!
So today I got to do the labels and fill out the lab forms for all 130+ samples I'd gotten since Wednesday. Thank heavens for printable labels with Word templates, or I think my hand would have staged a mutiny for overwork at handwriting!! But it all got done. Despite the complete and total exhaustion that set in Friday night, it felt good to essentially be in charge at the site (the guys did what I told them to!) and to know exactly what needed to happen for the sampling. The three guys on the crew were also SO cool, which really added to the experience. So funny, so good at what they do. All-around awesome. :-)
One other nice side-benefit to this week was the fact that, because this was field time instead of office time, I get paid for the hours in excess of 40 even though I'm salaried. And it comes just after my new raise (!!!!) takes effect, so it's at my new higher rate. Life is very, very good in that sense. :-)
And, of course, there is nothing that can happen in a work-week that Sarah can't heal on a weekend. :-) Once I got up to Smith on Saturday she bought me yummy pastry and generally let us both have a good lot of time spent horizontal, in zen relaxing hours of "easy silence" (to quote the Dixie Chicks). Well, that's when she wasn't making me laugh, as she never fails to do. :-)
The show is in four days, my parents arrive in three, and everybody in the company seems to feel pretty good, very ready, but calm. It's been a surprisingly zen week-before-tech, actually, almost eerie - it's hard for me to believe the show's really almost here! Of course, tomorrow is the first night of tech, and then I'm SURE I'll believe it for real!!