Moving Day (West Side Story)

Because of the Monday Photo Shoot yesterday, I've waited until tonight to tell you the latest developments in my ongoing adventures at Obscure Largish Company.  As you can see from the pictures below, yesterday was Moving Day at O.L.C. (not its real initials).  But before I get on with telling you about that, let me just mention that last night I missed my chance to work in a great quote to go with my point about the relationship between food and hunger"

Ace:  "Professor, I'm hungry!  Lack of food makes me hungry, you know?"
The Doctor:  "Lack of food makes you obstreperous!"
--Doctor Who, "Remembrance of the Daleks" by Ben Aaronovitch

And now that I'm watching my favorite Doctor Who serial, it's going to be that much harder to get tonight's entry written!

Friday was the last day for one of my co-workers.  She'd been with O.L.C. for four years.  In order to fill the gap left by her departure, another person was promoted and trained to do her job.  A third person was trained to take over the second person's job, and a fourth person was hired (from the same service that found me!) to handle the third person's job.  For some reason, it was decided that the second person would move to the departing person's cubicle, and that the fourth person should be in the third person's old cubicle.  And as long as all that was going on, my boss decided that everyone in Accounts Payable should be on the same side of the room (east side).  Since I'm only marginally involved with A/P, I was to move to the west side the the room.  By the time this game of musical desks was over, one had moved in, one had moved on, and at least five people had moved around.  I ended up back to back with my old cubicle.

I had some urgent work to do, so while other people were packing, I was generating, printing and collating reports.  One person was in enough of a hurry that she offered to move my phone for me.  I agreed, but this was a mistake.  It turned out that with the phone unplugged, my computer could no longer access the program I was using to generate the reports. So I had to go get it back. When I had to explain this to my boss, I didn't mention the name of the person who moved my phone, thus deflecting any (extremely minor) wrath that might otherwise be directed at the person for her attempt to be helpful.  This was easy to do, because I'm not sure what her name actually is!  It probably doesn't matter, though, whether my boss knows who moved my phone.  In my experience, it's not the sort of place where people get in trouble for minor offenses.

By this point I had packed up a few things, but I decided to leave the rest until the IT guy came to move me.  I had the only computer that needed to stay with me specifically, because of one of the programs I use.  So yes, I still have the computer with the SpongeBob-shaped sticky spot--and I've lost the sun and moon sticker with which I was going to cover it.



By this time, a completely different person from the phone remover had already started moving into my cubicle.  That little piece of real estate had been reassigned--again!  So anyway, I finished my project, went to lunch, took down my pictures and boxed up Lilo and Zorro.  Still no IT guy. The word came down that they'd been busy with network-related problems, and might not even come by on Monday.  Just as I decided to start another project, the IT guy turned up anyway. 



I spent much of the afternoon getting set up again.  (Ooh, look at all these paper clips someone left for me!  And did the other cubicle have this big, shallow drawer?  Too bad this light isn't working, and there's no partition in that one big drawer, but I'll cope.)



The layout of this cubicle is  basically the reverse of the other one.  This time I arranged the pictures a little differently, put Zorro and Lilo on the shelf instead of above the cabinet (Zorro kept falling over when I opened the cabinet in the old cubicle), and put the blue globe down below.  So far, so good!

More important, I'm getting more comfortable with my co-workers. Person #2 and Person #3 have been nice to me all along, Person #4 is a loud, friendly New Yorker, and I've sort  of become friends with two of the people who didn't move, now my neighbors on the west side of the room. 

It turns out that one of my fellow west siders witnessed my pathetic attempt to use the LifeCycle at L.A. Fitness last night.  She mentioned that she lost track of me because I wasn't on the cycle very long, so I explained about the asthma.  It turns out she knows a lot more about asthma than I do.  Hers was many times worse than mine, with hospitals and everything, until a doctor took her off several medications and put her on a different one that actually works.  Now she walks two dogs every day, one at a time, a couple of miles each, and can hike up Sabino Canton and not have to rest for hours before starting back down.  If she can do all that, I'm sure I can work up to doing thirty minutes of cardio without the sensation of burning lungs, or coughing and panting for an hour or more afterward.

Tomorrow night, I have another session with another personal trainer.  John said okay to this new expense.  Yay!  I just need to follow through and do my part.  So far, so good!

Karen