Currently / 2.6.19

Jose and I have been back at work for a week and a half now, so of course life has gotten quite full again with activities and an overall lack of time to do everything we ideally would want to do. (Which is a long list.)

For me, work picked up again without too much of a hitch. I am acting in a management role right now as deputy chief for my division, which is a group of ~45 people. We’ve had a ton of management turnover in my organization lately, so the full story is a bit more complicated. The org structure from bottom to top is group, branch, division. My permanent job is as a group lead. I also had the opportunity last fall to act as a branch chief, so I’ve acted at several different levels of management at this point.

It’s been a good experience so far, and I have learned a lot about managing a full division, dealing with budgetary constraints, addressing personnel issues, strategic planning, etc. I knew about these types of activities before, but didn’t have the same level of insight or understanding that I do now.

I will be applying for a promotion soon, to move from group lead to branch chief. I don’t know what my chances are. I know I am a very strong candidate, but there are other very strong candidates too. We shall see what happens.

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Emma’s class celebrated their 101st day of school on Monday — 101st because they are FIRST graders! They were all encouraged to dress up like dalmatians, so we made this shirt on Sunday afternoon. I drew the outlines of the circles, she colored them in, and we both counted to make sure there were exactly 101. Cute.

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Our home improvements streak continues this week with new floors in the dining room/sewing room. I’ve mentioned that the driving force on the floors in this room is the fact that we had a leak along the outer wall that caused water damage to the old flooring. We had a crew out early last week to do a couple minor fixes to address that, like resealing the window and brick and repairing some of the gutters.

But as they got to work, they discovered the entire bottom of the wooden window frame was rotted. (Ah, so THAT’S where the water was seeping in.) What was supposed to be a 1 or 2 day job turned into a full week of various bits and pieces. Outside, they replaced the window frame. Inside, they had to pull up the baseboards, cut out a section of drywall, and pull out wet insulation. We then had to leave a fan on it for several days to dry everything out before they patched it all back up again.

I’m glad to have the issue fixed but sheesh, that escalated quickly. And it’s always a little frustrating to have to spend a bunch of money on something you can’t even see (even though I know it’s important).

Yesterday the crew arrived to demo the old floor…and the above photo is as far as they got in THREE HOURS. The existing floor is glued down ridiculously well. They finally abandoned the effort and will be back today with a different tool that they think will be more effective. Then they have to refloat the concrete subfloor (i.e. the slab foundation, which has never been level) and put down the new wood. Fingers crossed they can get all this done by Friday so I can have my sewing room back for the weekend.

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With my sewing room entirely in boxes at the moment, I obviously haven’t been doing much in that department. It’s just as well, since I have several different pattern writing and design projects on my plate that I am trying to get wrapped up before QuiltCon.

Two weeks till I leave for Nashville! Can’t wait!