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06/07/2006: "why is my down time so crazy?!?"
Yes, I know, I've been a bad blog monkey and haven't posted for a while. There has been good reason, all of which I'll try to remember. The Reader's Digest version of it all is that things have been pretty crazy both at home and at work.
First, on the home front. Jannette realized that in order to meet her self-imposed deadline to get the main floor from "our living room" to "Jannette's preschool", we would have to work around not having the basement finished. To that end, we started taking everything out of the living room and moving it upstairs. The "toy room" (previously the nursery) has become the TV room, and now houses the couch, sofa table, TV, and the center part of our entertainment unit. The playhouse that was in there is now on the main floor. Our bedroom divested itself of our green Ikea chair in exchange for the other two pieces of entertainment unit, and will eventually also house our armchair. So the main floor now only needs to be set up and organized ("only" - hah!) and bingo, we've got a preschool in our house.
Of course, if you're thinking the way I've been thinking, all this moving also means that when the basement IS finished, we get to move EVERYTHING again, but down two floors. Yeah, that'll be fun. There might be a bit of the same blue haze that surrounded me when moving the couch upstairs.
In general, the house is in a bit of a state of higglety-pigglety right now, and I think that's reflecting in our mental states. It doesn't help that the work front isn't any less "-igglety", either.
I finished my contract a week ago. Luckily, a contact from my last full-time position needed some work done, so I spent two days in his offices doing work on a project I've previously worked on. At the same time, I did some work for Gerald's - just a few hours' worth, and not concurrently with the other work I was doing, obviously.
Once that was done, there was more work to do with Gerald's, which meant that I spent part of my Saturday at his office doing some work. I had hoped to be able to do some more work for him on Sunday, but that didn't happen. Monday and Tuesday, however, I did full days, and then some. Apparently the three of them stayed at the office until 2:30am, one of them actually staying the full night through. I arrived Tuesday just before 9am, and didn't get home until 12 hours later. That, I think, is the longest work day I've ever put in. The reason things were so hectic was that they were preparing a funding proposal to do a project worth just shy of $3M, which would open up a huge industry to them. The deadline for submissions was today sometime, so we worked our tails off to get everything done in time to drop it off to be courriered to Ottawa. It was close - I had to write one section of the proposal in less than 10 minutes - but we did it. Whew.
Now I'm simply waiting for my next contract to start. I got word today that I have a new one coming, but it's not until Monday the 19th, so I have a week and a half to play with. Hopefully I'll be able to do more work for Gerald's, but I have other stuff I can do to.
See, Jannette got a job last week. She became a Non-Reponse Follow-Up Census Enumerator for Stats Canada. Basically, if you didn't fill out your census form (as you're legally required to do, don't you know) someone is going to come tracking it down. Jannette is now one such person. We decided that if I have some spare time, there's no reason why I shouldn't do it too. So I did the test, filled out the paperwork, and today I had the training session. Now I too am an NRFU, and will be asking people for their census forms. Exactly how we're going to work out who does what when, we will have to disucss. All we both know is that between the two of us we should be able to make a decent amount of money with our phone calling and field visits. At least, for the next week and a half.
What's more, Jannette got a call for an interview at Please Mum, a children's clothing store in our local mall. That interview is tomorrow. Assuming all goes well, I wonder if she can take part of her paycheque home in clothing? Hmm.
Oh, and just to ice the cake, the car needed some serious brake work. Like, four figures serious. Ouch. I guess that's what happens when it's recommended that you service your brakes yearly but don't know about it or do it. Word to the wise, OK? At least we can rest assured knowing that the car's going to stop the way it should now.
Fun times. We'll see what being an NRFU brings. Should be "interesting".
