Catching up The work stuff Departures, arrivals – welcome to the transit lounge
Oh, to have only 15 people around for lunch on Christmas day..... I haven't made an accurate count but we've got about double, with about 10 being children, and another handful being retired.
I've certainly had bigger Christmases, but I've never had to be the host of one on that scale. I'm happy to start off small [grin].
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Hmm, I must have been slightly busy in the past week or so, since it looks like I haven’t done a bleeding thing with Lexifab - at least according to the two blunt reminders from people I didn’t know read this (hi Son, hi Probes!). So this is going to be more along the lines of a memory exercise than a diary entry.
The settlement on the Dickson house finally went through last Wednesday, five days after it was originally scheduled and after two further deferrals. Financially that doesn’t really hurt us, since the line of credit account is only charged interest once a month. It was pretty irritating, though, since we’re pretty sure the delays were all down to the buyer’s complete lack of organisation. Not that I should be too critical – if it had been me buying a house, I probably would have dithered indecisively and put things off as well. Anyway, it’s done now, and we are the proud owner of a single house and a single mortgage.
The renovations have continued, albeit with a greater failure rate than we’ve previously achieved. On Sunday Meagan and I attempted to teach ourselves the art of cutting and attaching sculpted ceiling cornice. It can be said that this effort did not result in history’s finest hour. Or rather four hours, which is about how long it took us to realise that we were just wasting some pretty expensive cornice and were not going to achieve even our most basic objective i.e. cut a length of cornice to the correct length and angle. We did cut rather a lot of pieces to incorrect lengths and angles, and I like to think that by the end of it we were actually getting pretty good at that, but by that time we’d given up in disgust and secured Fiona’s agreement to just fork out the money for a professional to come and do it.
Ironically, a few minutes later, I worked out what it was we had been doing wrong this whole time, and went on to cut a very satisfactory length for the piece of ceiling intersected by the chimney. That’s when we discovered that the chimney is not square, and thus our perfected technique for achieving precision 45 degree cuts were of no practical use. And that’s when we gave up for good.
These are the final days of the project I’ve been working on since July – today is the day that the business is scheduled to accept the final milestones – and things are frantically busy. Except that really they’re super-frantic because I’m also trying to get the wheels turning on the next project, which is the one I will be managing. Gah! On top of this, it looks like Mike - who took over as the IT boss after that position’s previous occupant departed for his home hell dimension – might decide to take a job offer elsewhere, even if they offer him the job permanently. This would be a bit of a blow for me, since not only is his leadership the main reason I decided to stay in IT, but it’s also the reason that the other two guys I work with also stayed. And if things with Mike’s hypothetical replacement don’t work out, they’re much better positioned to up stakes and leave than I am. I fear the loss of my mentor-crutches!
Meagan’s staying with other friends for the remainder of her holiday, Simon’s away in Queensland for a week to attend a wedding, and I heard for the first time this week that Alastair’s moving out in mid-January. In the meantime Mum and Dad arrive mid-afternoon on Friday, followed shortly thereafter by Evan (actually Sonia gets back from New Zealand on the same day, but she won’t be staying with us, so I just mention it in passing. Jimbo’s suggestion that we should just camp out at the airport all day seems like a pretty good one). Anyway, the point seems to be that the natural state of our new house is cHa0s, which I guess I should just learn to get used to. On the plus side, I’m starting to get the hang of the plethora or remote controls commanding Simon’s terrifying array of audiovisual equipment, so at least I can watch DVDs when I want to…
Christmas is going to be a production of operatic proportions. I think we’ll have something like fifteen people (possibly more) around for lunch. Again with the chaos (but in a good way). That’s a whole lotta potato salad, king! (Ancient Sesame Street reference – don’t worry if you don’t get it)
2 Comments:
Hope the home invasion doesn't drive you to complete despair.
