Monday, October 11, 2010

the closer



Another construction job finished, cleaned up, polished, landscaped. The movers and decorators are busy spiffing up the inside in anticipation of opening day tomorrow.

After 3 weeks of working nonstop, jumping through hoops for inspectors, threatening subcontractors, and getting next to no sleep, Buddy "the closer" pulled off another deadline miracle. The final inspection passed on Friday just in time for the planned 3 day weekend transition/moving event.

Imagine it is closing time on Friday in a bank, and over the weekend everything needs to be moved to the new location which means of course furniture and records and safe deposit boxes, money, but more important in this day and time - the computers, making sure everything is hooked up and running, all those online transfers, automatic payments, connection to the feds, making sure everyone is communicating. All of this on a weekend, and ready to open for business on Monday morning - so the Columbus Day holiday weekend was the goal, an extra day to get it all done.

The end of a job means more stress, less sleep. The alarm clock was changed from 5 to 4:30 to even 1:30 one day, but it is often not necessary as Buddy is often already awake and making a list when it does go off.

The end of a job means vacation - hopefully! My feet have not felt the beach or a campground or a hiking trail in a long time. My butt is glued to this computer chair - yep time for a vacation. Where will it be? For a couple of months we have been tossing around ideas for Maine to Florida to Vegas, all depending on the timing.

The end of a job means the next one will probably be out of town. In anticipation of an upcoming stent in the travel trailer, it was opened up to air out and for cleaning a while back. It was about that time that I suggested we trade it in on a newer model… so the idea was planted and didn’t take long to sprout and take off like kudzu. The old trailer was cleaned up, traded in, and now we have a new home-away-from-home sitting in the driveway.

So change is in the air, the weather is cooler, the leaves are starting to drop, hopefully a trip is in the near future, possibly a new work destination, but best of all less stress, more sleep, that is until the end of the next job. And so it goes, déjà vu - is it the circle of life, or a treadmill, are we making any progress or just going round and round, oh well just happy to have a job right now and happy for a break from it!





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