Rebecca is getting old; has been losing weight for quite some time now. Last year I wrote about trying to trick her into eating more, in an attempt to get her to regain some weight after the yearly vet exam showed how much more she lost But last year I didn’t spend too much time worrying about it, because there were blood tests and there were physical exams, and except for the heart murmur and the acknowledgment of old age, it seemed that everything else was normal.

This year wasn’t the same story. This time when the vet came she had lost two more pounds. Considering she started at 9 pounds and the vet weighed her in at 6, this is a very bad sign. And this time when we did the round of blood tests, things weren’t so fine.

It could have been worse. It could have been kidney disease or diabetes or any number of other conditions that would have required difficult medication and treatment options and forced us to make some decisions I’m not yet prepared to make. But luckily it’s just hyperthyroid. Just hyperthyroidism. I never thought I’d be so happy about such a diagnosis, but after some of the other options that had come up after initial tests were inconclusive, this was the best of the lot. After all, it’s so common in older cats that it’s easy to treat. Drop a pill in her mouth twice a day for the rest of her life or inject her full of radioactive isotopes and turn her into a glow-in-the-dark cat to destroy her thyroid and everything will be happy.

She took the pill with absolutely no difficulty, so it wasn’t that she was hard to medicate. Unfortunately she is one of the small numbers of cats who cannot tolerate the medication in pill form. Basically she ended up puking her guts out on a daily basis, and sometimes more often than that, and by the time of her first checkup she’d lost another half pound. She’s skin and bones. When she sits on my lap and I pet her fur and slick it close to her body I can feel every one of her vertebrae and the sharpness of the bones underneath her skin, with no padding to dull their edges from my probing fingers.

There is another alternative for the medication, although you have to have it specially ordered from very specific veterinary pharmacies. They’ve managed to put the stuff in a highly absorbable cream, which gets rubbed into the cat’s ear.

They sent me the first box a little over a week ago, and when I opened it I found six skinny syringes of medicated cream and a sheet of explicit instructions. Apply 0.1 cc of the cream to the inner ear of the cat twice a day, said the instructions. But do not apply with bare skin. Only do this when wearing gloves.

Because most people do not make a habit of keeping gloves in their houses, the pharmacy had very nicely included six little finger gloves in the box – one for each syringe. These were rolled up into little latex discs, carefully nestled beside the syringes on a bed of cotton. And surely I do not need to go into much more detail here before you all figure out just what these little things look like.

Or maybe I do, because after all at age 34 I have long since grown past the age of immaturity and at this wise and mature age I would certainly always refer to them as finger gloves and not as finger condoms, and I would never giggle madly and refer to the little air bubble at the tip of the finger after slipping on the glove (condom) as the ‘reservoir tip’, and I would never gleefully announce to my husband, twice a day, regular as clockwork, in my best redneck drawl, that it’s time to slip on a finger condom and go grease up the cat.

Or maybe I would, if only because right now humor is the only way I can deal with this situation; with the knowledge that my little girl is sick and isn’t getting any better. Maybe the humor is what I use to try to pretend that the vet doesn’t keep suggesting we do an ultrasound because he thinks maybe something else is going on too; there’s a thickness in her intestines that might or might not be a problem and there are other symptoms that shouldn’t be happening with this medication that suggest that there might be something else as well. Maybe the humor is sometimes the only way I can forget that there ever was mentioned the possibility of intestinal cancer, or that the only other treatment option available for this is so prohibitively expensive that suddenly I am forced to try to put a price on a life, to try to somehow put all the what-ifs together into some more cohesive puzzle; to try to demand from whatever deity may or may not exist that I be given some kind of guarantee that if we go through this, she will live a long and healthy life because I don’t know how to be ready to let her go.

Today Richard and I went to the zoo. The main reason was to see lemurs, but also it’s been a very long time since either of us has been to a zoo, and I’ve never been to the one in San Francisco.

We headed out bright and early in order to get a decent parking place. Since we arrived an hour before the zoo opened, we managed to get a spot right in front (go figure). This also left us plenty of time to wander across the street to the beach and watch the surfers in the ocean.

I’ve never seen people surfing before. Sure, I’ve seen it in movies, but never in real life. As we were driving by, all the dark shapes looked at first like a random gathering of seals in the water. But as we got closer I could see that each dark shape was a person, bobbing about in the water clutching a surfboard, waiting for just the right wave. There weren’t all that many waves that were acceptable, judging by the length of time most of the people spent bobbing about in the water waiting, but every once in a while one would come in strong enough and a handful would get up on their boards and do a credible job of remaining upright for short periods of time.

We headed back across the street and waited outside with a handful of others until the gates opened and we went in and spent the next six hours wandering all over the park looking at all the animals, and especially the lemurs.

We watched them feed the elephants and the penguins and the lions and tigers. We saw an entire flock of flamingos, including a few babies – white balls of fluff that had the most ridiculously long legs for a baby bird. We got sidetracked by the juvenile lion cubs, who kept a small group of us entertained with their antics. They were playing like kittens, with their stuffed fish toys and sisal rope-wrapped boards, and dangling ropes, but these particular kittens had feet the size of dinner plates, and when they were wrestling with each other they growled far deeper and louder than the kittens I’m used to.

There was a bit of playing in other areas as well, although for the most part most of the animals were napping or yawning. One of the polar bears had a tire he was wrestling with, and when you are a huge bear, you wrestle in slow motion. He would lift it up in one giant paw and slowly bring it to his mouth to chew, and then roll over on his back and bat at the tire.

We wandered off toward the conservation section to try to see the other large cats, but they were all hiding, probably asleep, and the only furry face we saw there belonged to a fisher cat baby, who peered at us sleepily from the very top box of a huge cat tree.

It’s a wonderful zoo. Most of the animals seemed to have lots of space and the ones that normally live in green areas had lots of trees and bushes and places to climb or lurk or swing or burrow. We saw an anteater and a shy zebra and turtles and tortoises and a turkey vulture and the world’s ugliest stork, but no ostrich. We saw a pair of river otters with whiskery faces and bright eyes, and an orangutan asleep, a furry ball ‘under’ a shallow plastic water dish. There was a kangaroo who couldn’t be bothered and a very anxious coyote and an albino wallaby that looked as if he had just woken up and didn’t quite remember who he was, and a really bored hippo and a very industrious rhino. The prairie dogs were mostly sleeping or wandering around nibbling on grass, but the meerkats were busily active, digging in tunnels or darting here and there, or stopping what they were doing to peer quizzically back at the humans that were peering at them.

And of course we also saw lemurs – lots and lots of lemurs. There were ruffed ones that were black and white like skunks, or rust-colored with black bellies, or solid black, all lolling around on trees or the ground or on specially heated platforms where they could sprawl and expose their tummies to heat lamps or the sun. There were also smaller ring-tailed lemurs, including two babies who zipped wildly all over their enclosure, swinging up and down and occasionally taking a flying leap and landing squarely on the back of the one we assumed was their mother. They all have extremely long and extremely fluffy tails, which they seemed to take great pride in, draping their tails over their shoulders.

We took lots of pictures and you can see them all here, because I am not going to try to fit them all into this entry somehow.

After all of that our feet were sore and we were a little bit sun burnt because naturally we forgot to put on any sunscreen in preparation for this trip. But we figured as long as we were in the area we might as well get dinner and since Richard hadn’t been there yet we called up The Stinking Rose (where they season their garlic with food!) and after a few cell phone signal issues, finally managed to get directions and somehow navigated all those one-way streets in San Francisco without getting lost. We smeared rolls liberally with roasted garlic cloves and then split a bowl of roasted garlic potato onion soup, and barely had room left for the main course, which was garlic-roasted lamb for Richard and roasted chicken with a huge pile of roasted garlic cloves for me. It was heaven to be able to just sit and let our feet try to recover from all the walking around the zoo and watch the people as they walked past us outside, and then when we were stuffed with food and had eaten enough garlic to make ourselves completely unsuitable for polite company, we finally came back home, tired, sore from walking, comfortably sleepy, just a little bit sun burnt, and in complete agreement that it had been a marvelously wonderful day.

Another Friday Five.

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?

   At first thought it’s easy to say that I despise all chores equally. But I think the reality is that I despise the thought of chores, and once I actually get myself motivated enough to do what needs to be done, it usually takes less time and is much less horrendous than anticipated. Does this get me to clean more often? Heck no.

   Luckily it doesn’t really matter so much anymore since we’ve been handing over large chunks of cash to have someone come in and clean the house every other week. It is the most marvelous feeling to walk in after they have been here and know that the dust bunnies are no longer lurking in corners to taunt me in my reluctance to vacuum them away.

2. Are there any that you like or don’t mind doing?

   Washing dishes by hand is probably one of the chores I despise the least. There’s something rather relaxing about standing at a sink scrubbing things. It’s requires practically no thought whatsoever so I can just let my mind wander away.

   Now that I’ve got a dishwasher I rarely wash dishes by hand anymore. I suppose I could pretend that I miss it, but we’d all know I was lying.

3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it’s needed?

   In our house, the routine, such as it is, is relegated to only a few tasks – mainly cleaning the litter boxes and making sure the water and food bowls are filled. The rest tends to be done on an as-needed basis. Laundry gets done once a week, usually, and since we both do our own laundry, it’s never that much of a hassle. Shared laundry (towels, sheets, the bedspread during a major hairball hacking fest) gets done as needed. Kitchen counters get cleaned and wiped as needed, usually as I am in process of cooking or preparing a meal. Dishes get washed when there are enough in the sink to fill the dishwasher. I suppose I could put them in the dishwasher as we use them but I am extremely anal about how the dishwasher gets filled and I just know that this would end up with me having to unload and reload the darn thing every time a new set of dishes was dirtied.

   Back before we had someone in to clean every other week, the rest of the chores tended to get done when I finally got sick enough of tripping over dust bunnies to grumble-nag Richard into vacuuming – which would also guilt me into cleaning the bathrooms because if vacuuming was his chore, scouring the toilet bowls was mine. And dusting – well, let’s just not talk about dusting, shall we?

4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?

   I already mentioned my issues with loading the dishwasher. It is so bad that if Richard loads the dishwasher I literally cannot look at what he is doing or I will start rearranging it and driving us both crazy. Once the dishes are clean I really don’t care how they were loaded, but pre-washing it’s an issue. Yes I know I need help.

   Other than that I can’t think of any other bizarre little quirks regarding cleaning, unless you count the fact that even at the ripe old age of 34 I still have this wishful fantasy that somewhere out there, cleaning elves really do exist.

5. What was the last thing you cleaned?

   The last thing I cleaned (I’m going to say that the daily litterbox scooping fest doesn’t really count) was the kitchen counter. The next thing I should be cleaning are the dishes, since it appears it’s time for another trip to obsessive-land with the dishwasher.

Bad news, I’m afraid. The invisible pocketknife – the knife that has successfully passed under the not-so-watchful eyes of the airport security in at least a dozen flights around this country – this knife is no more. Apparently the security personnel at the courthouse in Fairfield are far more observant, or else their x-ray machinery is superior to that used in airport terminals. They caught my knife in the first go. In deference to their superior technology I gave them the knife to toss. It’s old, the blade is so dull it couldn’t possibly cut anything anymore, and I never really use for anything more than a nail file these days. Plus I think there was something growing in the cracks and besides I really want to get myself a new one – perhaps one of those incredibly spiffy knives similar to the computer nerd pocketknife I gave Richard last Christmas.

I suppose, in a way, this is for the best, because one of these days those airport security folks would have eventually caught it. Really they would. No, I’m sure of it. Just pretend I said those last bits without the slightest hint of sarcasm, okay?

The reason my knife had to be caught in the first place was that I was called for jury duty on Wednesday. Tuesday night I called the handy number, and after wading through some version of voicemail hell, I eventually discovered that I’d been given a one-day reprieve. Unfortunately, last night I discovered that the reprieve was over and I had to show up in Fairfield to join a small throng of other similarly disinterested people, to mull around in a large green room wearing oh-so-lovely Juror badges, waiting for hours on end to either be called into the court or released back to freedom. Yes, I know the jury system is important, and it’s critical to have intelligent people on the jury in all cases of trial, but oh this is so horridly inconvenient, and I have to admit that I have spent a good deal of time since receiving that summons trying to come up with ways in which I might possibly be able to get out of it.

Luckily I never had the opportunity to try any of the (probably incredibly lame) schemes I had come up with for getting out of serving, because after we’d all been sitting there for a few hours the judge himself came in and told us that in the last fifteen minutes they had suddenly dismissed the charges and hence, there was no longer a trial to select a jury for, and suddenly we were free. I joined the milling throngs to pick up my verification of service, just in case I get called again before twelve months are up (this county only requires service once a year), hiked back to my car, got in, pulled out of the parking lot, and hadn’t driven more than a block when the odd thunking noises coming from the right front side of the car had me pulling into the nearest place I could find to stop.

There is a lot of construction going on across the street from the courthouse, and I have a feeling that I probably managed to pick up some sort of stray metal bit from there. Whatever it was had done a good job because the right front tire was completely flat. Ugh.

A very nice man stopped while I was crouched on the ground jacking up the car and came over to help, so between the two of us we got the dead tire off and the spare on. Then he pointed me to the nearest tire store and my car and I limped off to find it. Should I mention at this point that the spare was flat too? Yes indeedy it was all kinds of fun!

I knew this was all because my car was jealous of Richard’s, since it was just last week it and I were at another tire store getting a new wheel. Ha ha, my car said proudly since it has now one-upped Richard’s car, earning a pair of new tires instead of the single one Richard’s car got. Ha ha, said my brain as I winced at the cost of those brand new tires, tired from sitting and twiddling my thumbs in a very green jury room and weak from hunger because by then it was way past time for lunch.

After all of the fun and excitement of the morning I decided that the rest of the day was a complete and total loss and just went home. This decision was spurred on by the fact that even if I had made it into the office after all the aforementioned fun and excitement, I’d have only been there a few hours, and somehow it didn’t seem worth the commute. So instead of doing more research on the embodied energy of ceiling tiles, I lay in bed and poked at the cats and read books until Richard came home. While he made dinner (the most marvelous cheeseburgers, swimming in onions and garlic, followed by pumpkin spice cake and cinnamon gingerbread ice cream which I am only mentioning here because it is so good!) I decided that I might as well do *something* productive (besides spend money on car wheels) so I went outside and managed to clear the weeds out of a huge chunk of the backyard path (persistent little suckers, weeds are).

Today my boss and I ended up doing a little research project, trying to find information about, among other things, the ecological footprint of buildings. It was one of those incredible fun yet frustrating research projects because I end up finding all manner of sites chock full of information that have very little to do with the project at hand, but still are interesting enough I get distracted reading them.

Naturally, when searching for things on environment and ecological footprints, we both ended up finding variations on a theme – quizzes we could take to find out what our own ecological footprints were. And naturally, since these type of sites do tend to be a little weighted, we were told we’re just big wasteful Americans and if everyone lived like we did we’d need nearly four planets to support our wasteful little habits.

It’s not that I don’t realize that I’m not living as environmentally conservative and considerate as I probably could, but it does frustrate me that things like this tend to skew results without taking into account a lot of important topics. But even knowing this, doing this kind of research, especially after taking the environmental footprint quiz, really gets to me after a while. It fills me with guilt for all the things I could be doing but am not. It makes me want to rebuild our house to make use of the natural breezes for ventilation, and solar panels for energy. It makes me want to turn our entire backyard into a garden where we can grow our own vegetables, which I will then can in little glass jars tied with sisal string, and line them up on little shelves in my laundry room so in the middle of winter there they are, just waiting to be eaten. And it makes me feel horribly guilty for not trying to get to work some other way than by car, even though it would take me twice as long and cost twice as much.

But then I come to my senses and remember that I really hate gardening and I really don’t think I could stand to live in this part of California without air conditioning, and despite my best intentions there is no practical way for me to get to work except by car. So instead of going overboard and become an ecomaniac, I instead resolve to adjust the air conditioner controls to higher temperatures, and try to remember to always recycle every scrap of paper and cardboard and every plastic or glass or tin container we use, and maybe eat meat a few less times a week. And I remind myself that as soon as we pay off our current car loan I’m trading in my car for a hybrid. And maybe someday my office will move to a place that is closer to a bus line, and maybe once I start on my very tiny little garden I will discover a heretofore unrealized love of bugs and dirt and weeding, and maybe the guy who installs solar panels will finally call us to schedule an evaluation of our roof like he said he would when we signed up for it weeks ago, and maybe that’s all I can reliably count on for now.

I’ve talked before about the fact that our office has no sound insulation and how annoying it is, but bear with me, because I’m going to talk about it again. What can I say, with the recent construction in the next-door office it’s been on my mind a lot.

Today the construction wasn’t as bad as it’s been before, since it seems they are now laying carpets. This is actually a good thing, because if they are laying carpets, chances are pretty high they are nearly done with all the other banging, thumping, sawing, and other noise-producing activities involved in getting an office ready for new occupants. However, the carpet layers seemed to be big into the yelling and the arguing, and also the swearing.

I am not some quivering violet who is disturbed by a swear word every now and then. But when every other sentence includes references to bodily functions in some manner or another, it really starts getting to me. And it didn’t help that they kept arguing with each other. Loudly.

Add to this the fact that the people downstairs were in rare form, especially the woman we have nicknamed The Chipmunk, and by the end of the day most of us had just about had it. The people downstairs usually aren’t so awful as today (although with all the arguing and screeching going on this afternoon I swear it wouldn’t surprise me to one day discover The Chipmunk had gone on a gun-toting rampage and shot her coworkers), and I know that the construction next door is nearly done. But lately I’ve been wondering if Murphy’s Law will kick in with a vengeance and our soon-to-be next door neighbors will be the type who stomp up and down the stairs (that are over my head) like elephants and holler back and forth to each other even worse than The Chipmunk and her equally vocal coworkers, or worse yet, have insidiously annoying cell phone rings they keep at full volume. I worry about this because I know that if this does happen, and the people downstairs keep up with their daily tirades, one of these days I and my coworkers just might snap and take out the whole lot of them, armed with nothing more than industrial strength rubber bands, rolls of detailed construction plans, and a protractor.

In honor of Labor Day Richard and I did our very best to do nothing remotely productive all day. We actually were succeeding pretty admirably, having lounged around in our pajamas until lunchtime, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. So we got dressed and ate lunch and then headed off to pick out three different colors of paint. Two are for the claustrophobic toilet room in the master bathroom, and the other was a quart of brown paint for the breakfast nook tree. I picked up a roll of painter’s tape for the toilet room (because pin stripes are going to require an awful lot of marking – ugh), and a package of skinny art brushes, and then when we got home I spread newspaper all over the floor of the breakfast nook, dragged out the stepstool, and finally painted in the outline that has been penciled on our wall since last weekend.

Ta da! Phase one of the breakfast nook tree is complete. It’s a bit startling to round the corner and see something dark on the wall, but I’m rather happy with how it turned out. Now if I could just find the same motivation to finish sewing the curtains for that room….

Friday night we got three flats of creepers and planted them in ragged little clumps among the rocks of the path around the raised flowerbed. This has the lovely effect of making the rock path look as if it has sprouted a few dozen rather unsightly clumps of weeds. My hope is that the creepers will grow and..er…creep to fill in the holes and once it is more uniformly green and leafy, it will look slightly less unkempt.

After our little foray into gardening for the artistically inept, we watched Death to Smoochy, because apparently this week was a Robin Williams week. And after that we went to bed to try to rest up for the next day because…

Saturday we spent all day in Berkeley, helping Beth and Sabs move out of one apartment and into another about twenty minutes drive away.

Amusingly enough, we actually helped them move into that apartment a few years back – and back then we’d never met them until the day we showed up to help them lug their few thousand boxes of books up an extremely steep and narrow flight of stairs (okay, I exaggerate. There may have been only a few hundred. Heh). I teased Beth at one point, asking her if this meant the friendship was now over, since we’d moved them in and were now moving them out.

It was a long and tiring afternoon, but then moving always is. It’s impossible to ever be completely packed, and in their case it didn’t help they have six ‘helpful’ kitties and an extremely active little boy. But somehow, even after resorting to tossing things willy-nilly into huge plastic bags instead of boxes, we got them into their new apartment, where we left them with towers of boxes and headed home to shower the moving grime away and then collapse into bed and not wake up until we absolutely had to the next morning.

Sunday we were both pretty sore from the moving activities on Saturday so we tried to do as little as possible until it was time to get back into the car and go off to see a play.

Richard’s parents are involved in a theater group in their church. In the past few years we have seen Wizard of Oz, where Richard’s little sister played the scarecrow, and Honk, where she played the (male) tomcat. This year, continuing the theme of only playing male characters, she played the lead role in Peter Pan.

It was a wonderful production, even if they did accidentally blow up Peter Pan on the pirate ship (sound effect miscue). Conveniently enough, we passed by a Trader Joe’s the way home. This was a good thing because (horror of horrors) we had completely run out of the vegan cheese blintzes Richard and I are completely addicted to. And plus there is a Krispy Kreme right in the same shopping center, with the little “Hot Now” sign all lit up, and everyone knows that donuts so hot from the fryer they melt in your mouth are completely point free.

Another Friday Five. And yes it’s Saturday but hey, at least it’s in the same week.

1. Are you going to school this year?

   I cannot even begin to imagine going back to school. Every once in the while I toy with the idea of taking a class in something just for fun, but so far I haven’t gotten around to it. Eight years of college was more than enough school for my adult life. It’ll be a long time before I have the desire to do that again.

2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?

   Officially, I received my bachelor’s in 1991. Unofficially, I left college in 1997, with all the coursework done for my masters and with nothing left to do but write the thesis. I left voluntarily, and it’s something I’ve never regretted, but I’ve told that story a time or two already so no need to tell it again.

3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?

   In high school I think my favorite subjects were math and band. I had the same math teacher all four years of high school Turns out he hand-picked his class each year and for whatever reason I was one of the ones he picked. He was a hard teacher but none of us minded, and if it hadn’t been for my high school calculus notes I would never have made it through calculus in college, so obviously it all paid off. And I loved band because it was easy. I was in everything – jazz band, marching, concert, and the wind ensemble. I played marimba, xylophone, flute, oboe, and piano. It was marvelous.

   In college, the bulk of my favorite classes were in physiology. In fact, it was when we got to the gastrointestinal tract in my first physiology class that I decided to switch to nutrition, just because I found it so fascinating. If they’d allowed people to minor in physiology I would have, I loved it so much. As it was I took more physiology classes than I needed to, just because it was so fun.

   My other favorite in college was physiological chemistry. Inorganic chemistry never made any sense to me and my brain couldn’t ever seem to grasp the whole weak acid, strong base thing. I barely managed to pass the inorganic classes, but when we got to organic chemistry and physiological chemistry suddenly everything made perfect sense. Whereas the rest of my classmates were clutching their heads and staring in blank horror at their books (just as I had done in inorganic), I was having fun. And physiological chemistry was even better. It all made perfect sense how everything interacted in the living organism, and somehow that made up for the fact that inorganic chemistry can still reduce me to tears of noncomprehension.

4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
   See above re. inorganic chemistry in college (and, for that matter, in high school). My brain cannot wrap itself around this topic. Also back in high school I couldn’t stand P.E., which is perfectly understandable when you realize that if the sport involves a ball, I stink at it.

5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?

   I didn’t have a favorite professor in college, but there were a few that stand out. The professor who taught the basic phyisology class was such an incredibly good lecturer that at the end of the quarter, the class gave him a standing ovation. The professor for the two quarters of physiological chemistry had a cute sense of humor when he taught.

   In high school my favorite teacher was my senior AP English teacher. She was funny, she was smart, and she took a group of us every year and taught us how to write, and write damn well. I realized, years later after I heard about her death, that she is probably one of the reasons I love writing. She laid the foundation for how to do it and encouraged us to figure out the rest.

My office is located in an unusual sort of building. It has incredible character, both in its rather interesting interior architecture, and also from the fact that it is located right on the Sacramento River (I have a huge picture window over my desk, on which reside the office binoculars. Talk about easy way to get distracted). However, it also has its faults, including absolutely no sound insulation in any of the walls, and a wiring system that would make any self-respecting electrician bawl like a little baby from sheer horror. The lack of sound insulation has been fun enough with just our downstairs neighbors, one of whom the office has not so lovingly nicknamed The Chipmunk due to the fact that she has a rather high-pitched and unpleasant laugh.

For the longest time we were the only ones on the second floor. However, for the past several weeks they have been getting the office beside us ready for new tenants. And since the office next to us has been vacant for so long, and wasn’t exactly finished to begin with, this has included a lot of work. An awful lot of extremely noisy work, especially when it is happening directly over my head (their loft space is right over my desk).

This is where the wiring system comes in to play. Not only do we get the sound of sawsalls and other equally noisy power tools (not to mention the dulcet tones of either honky tonk country music, or the top 40 teen hits) blaring through the walls along with the unmistakable aroma of paint, varnish, and carpet paste, we also get the joy of having, without warning, an entire bank of electric circuits go kaput. Sometimes it’s only a few lights. But other times it’s something a bit more critical, like our phone system, or our server.

To their credit it’s not as if they are being hopelessly negligent. The wiring system really is that screwed up. Our circuits and those of our soon-to-be next-door neighbors are so hopelessly untangled that no one seems to know which end is up. It was so bad that when my company moved in a few years ago, the electrician who was setting the office up for them pretty much said that he’d be able to get us up and running but god help whoever moved in on the other side. I’m sure that lately there’s been a fair bit of praying to one deity or another among the unfortunate souls who’ve been tasked to untangle the mess and I don’t envy them that task. But that still doesn’t detract from the fact that it can be annoyingly inconvenient for us.

Today they managed, in a sheer stroke of luck and incredible timing, to knock out both the phone system *and* the server (and thus our access to email) in one blow. Maybe not normally such a big deal, but today the plan was for us to all leave early, to get a head start on the three-day weekend. I’ve been waiting all week for final decisions on what gets changed in that database I distributed two weeks ago, so that I can do the necessary tweaks and fire off the latest copy so the rest of the offices can be ready when we go officially live on Tuesday – tasks which not only required the ability to email things to the other offices, but also to access their remote servers to update some files. The others were equally inconvenienced, since this had to happen on the last billable day of the month, when several large projects were scheduled to be completed and sent out – projects whose files reside on the aforementioned server which the electricians next door sent off to never-never land.

Luckily they were very understanding and after about an hour of us all meandering around, aimlessly twiddling our thumbs and eating peanut M&M’s, they came in toting a huge blue extension cord, which they proceeded to use to divert us to another circuit until they could figure out just what the heck they’d managed to do to the first. I don’t know about everyone else, but I at least managed to get that database modified and installed on at least two remote servers, plus learn new and interesting ways to bring up the blue screen of death on my own computer (which apparently has taken a rather violent dislike to NetMeeting) in time to escape early enough to avoid any traffic on the way home. Which, at least for me, more than made up for the power outage and the pounding and the light rain of bits of plaster falling from the ceiling onto my head.