Happy Spring, I guess
Good day, gentle readers.
Watching the world burn isn’t much fun, though it has been a constant since January 20th. But making matters worse, it turns out things can get weird up here as well. It’s as if the world wants me stressed out, and it is achieving that goal quite successfully.
Let me discuss the reassuring things first:
- Tinkerbelle is still fine. We’re just over two weeks from her next vet checkup, and she’s just as feisty as ever. No concerns here.
- My eye is also just fine. As I said last time, the optometrist told me not to worry and that it would heal in a week or two. And despite more than half of my eyeball being red instead of white, it was back to normal in a week. I heard a number of different reactions to this issue. Some of you were worried to various degrees, and some (like my mother) said, “Yeah, that happens. It’ll heal.” Thanks to both those who worried and to those who told me not to.
Now on to the unexpected sources of stress in my life last week.
The first was the renovation. The plumbing inspector turned out to be difficult. He was here weeks ago to see and approve the in-ground plumbing work. That went well, but when he came back to approve the plumbing rough-in, things were different. He didn’t recall that he’d been here before and had to be told that he’d approved the in-ground plumbing already. Then he didn’t understand the water lines for the new hydronic (hot water) heating system and started looking for issues to pick on. And finally he was crabby because the shower wasn’t at the state he wanted it to be at before he could fail the inspection on it.
Yes, I wrote that correctly. He has to fail that inspection. The issue, as I understand it, is that we have no bathtub in this bathroom. Tubs get inspected and leak tested before the drywall goes up. But a shower like ours can’t be tested until after it is waterproofed, and that can’t happen until the drywall is all up and the tile guy has worked some amount of his magic. So we have to “fail” the shower leak test inspection now, but we can proceed on to other inspections and eventually come back and pass the leak test later. It’s a software imposed oddity, we think.
Anyway, we lost a week to this inspector’s pickiness. But just this morning he was back, and he passed the heating lines and failed the shower, so we’re back on track. That’s a good thing, as I have spent all week grinding my teeth about the delay. Stress I definitely did not need.
On Monday we’ll get the framing inspection and keep pushing forward. If all goes well, the insulation will happen (or at least get started) next week.
Here’s a photo of the heating lines going around the back door:
They’ve been moved to make space for insulation (that we don’t need) between the door and the lines, but at least they passed inspection.
The other unexpected source of stress this past week was that I was fired from both of my jobs at Langara. Amusingly, no one told me about it. In fact, I am scheduled to work one day this coming week, and it was only by accident that I learned I’d been fired at all.
And I don’t even know the full story yet. What I know can be summarized thusly:
Apparently my employment as the Fine Arts shop coordinator was “accidentally” terminated a few days ago. I discovered this when my logins on the college computers started to fail. I got in touch with the admin who makes the Fine Arts department run, who got me in touch with HR, who said (grossly paraphrased): “Oops. Sorry.”
Really.
No one reached out to me about this, and apparently no one in Fine Arts was contacted either. Very strange.
When this came to light, the HR person asked the powers that be to rescind my termination, and I was given a new set of accounts on the campus computer systems. New accounts. The files I had stored on the system relating to my work in the Makerspace: gone. Old emails: also gone.
Getting to that point took several hours. Over several more hours I got IT to restore the missing email, which is handy because there were some related to the job I am doing next week. But it seems they cannot restore the lost files. They’re just gone. All because of an accident.
But we’re not done. I had two jobs at the school, and when my accounts were restored, the Makerspace job wasn’t there anymore. So I asked about that and was told that it was terminated early in 2024. Excuse me?!? Once again, no one told me anything about that, and I suspect no one told my boss either, since he would definitely have mentioned it.
My Makerspace boss has now started the process of reinstating me in that role, so I can work at the Makerspace again if needed. I have no idea how that will go, but it is happening.
In short, I lost nearly two full days trying to figure out what was going on and getting my job back in time to work again next week. More stress I did not need.
On top of all that, the next monthly email is coming up quickly, and there’s a lot of organizational work and writing that was (and still is) needed.
As you can see, it was a difficult week. The reno didn’t move along thanks to an inspector, my weird job situation got even weirder, and life continues to keep me far too busy for someone who is supposedly retired!
The comic below — by Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal — seems shockingly relevant given the news of late and my personal stress levels. Not only that, the guy in the middle seat perfectly expresses my general response to meditation.
Thus endeth today’s post.
May all your inspectors be sane and your employment steady (at least as long as you want it to be).
