bunt sign

Wednesday, August 22, 2001

We create our own crises and then solve them by wasting excessive energy to a disproportionate degree. That's what we do here. And by "we," I mean "Not Me." (Sorry. "Not I.")

And we're good at it. (And this time, I do mean me. I.) There should have been no reason for me to be on the phone with the insurance agency again for a certificate I ordered a week ago, except that Someone lost the one they already sent. Someone claims he never got it, but knowing Someone's track record, I tend to believe the insurance agent. (And isn't that a sorry state of affairs?)

Now I have to ask the insurance agency for another favor. The Boss has found a job he wants to bid on. He knew about the job over a week ago but didn't order the bidding documents until Monday. The bid is due next Monday, in a remote town in the mountains. That means I should overnight our proposal to the owner no later than Friday. But I have an audit here Friday afternoon, and I don't even know if I'll have a bidder's bond in time to do anything.

The plans got here today, but the Boss is out of touch, nursing his girlfriend through a medical procedure of some sort. I won't hear from him until Thursday night, and that's when I'll be able to ask him the questions I need to have answered before I can request a bidder's bond. It's the insurance agent's job to get the bonding company to approve it, and the bonding company is already upset with us because of something it didn't like in the financial statements. Since the Boss is out of touch, he can't answer their questions, either.

So I won't be able to order the bond until Friday morning at the earliest. But I'll need to pick it up in Petaluma Friday morning, because the auditor is coming Friday afternoon. And then I'll have to hope I can find an overnight delivery office open Saturday, so that I can try to get the completed bid form delivered to the wilderness by Monday afternoon.

Does it sound as if I think this is an impossible project? (And did I say somewhere up above that I'm good at dealing with crises? Ha!) What I'd like to do is tell the Boss that there's no way this is all going to come together in time. It's my job to make the impossible happen, though, and to keep him from noticing how hard that is. Sometimes that's like asking me to fly to the moon and bring back a hunk of Monterey jack.

The kicker is that we already have almost as much work as our crew can handle, and the Boss was probably going to bump up the price on this new job so that we likely wouldn't be the low bidder (but if we were, we'd make a lot of money on it).

So that's my day. I've been running around trying to put together paperwork that (a) we probably won't be able to use, because of time constraints, and (b) probably won't produce any benefit for the company, even if the timing miraculously comes together. And I did all this instead of preparing for the audit. So I'm a little frustrated tonight.




front step

Less than a month ago, I had this area by my front step completely cleared out.



The coffee I had yesterday morning on our way out of town did me in today. I was first wired, then tired. For most of the day I had a little buzz on, but in the evening I was suddenly immobile and unconscious. By last night, for some reason, I was simply so wide awake again that I couldn't get to sleep. That made it even harder to cope with the crises I faced today.




previousbunt signemailnext

Latest recommendation:

SecraTerri, *FootNotes*, August 21, Robotics

Other recent recommendations can be found on the links page.
Subscribe to the list to be notified of updates.