... eliminates an entire cupboard under the stairs in order to

a) add an extremely janky on the back end tv setup
b) open up the other end and INSERT AN ENTIRE BILLY BOOKCASE very badly as a screamingly inadequate pantry?

The same kind of coked-up labrador retriever who would string live wires across the badly drywalled-in former door to the cupboard, that's who.

The niche that apparently held some kind of equipment to support the wall-mounted screen facing the living room also had a coaxial cable diving through the garage wall, and a piece of drywall held on with security screws, through which you could stick an arm or so to plug in the tv or whatever the heck.

Belovedest was sputtering in Child Of Electrical Engineer. For my part, I had my camp chair there, and I'd carried it into the garage and did my best to imitate that gif of the guy rocking up with his chair and deploying it smoothly and sitting down to enjoy the show.

Because the power outlets closest to the garage door openers were operated via the light switch, there was a small power strip daisy chain to actually power the one garage door opener that was currently in use. (The other one was unplugged, and I see why they chose that one for the opener itself, but the other garage door opens properly and doesn't shake and rattle like it's going to fall down on someone's head.)

I am personally willing to give a pass on the aesthetic sins committed to this house, since I mostly do not give two fucks about visible patching (why we discovered the cupboard under the stairs in the first place), nor about crown molding, questionable taste in light fixtures, and *gasp* a combination of chrome and brushed nickel finish in the bathrooms, but my daughter does and so I will support her in that.

But what was done to that cupboard under the stairs was several kinds of crime and perhaps some of them were against building codes.

"Waving its antennae at me like it owned the place!" -- Dad, on a particularly bold pentatomid.
More recently, me, about a small implementation of la cucharacha.


Work was monitoring. Monitoring, as anticipated, was work. I sped through, despite it being the first day of the logical week and having one monitor out. (It helped that a good seven or eight of the people I got from the monitor who was out's list were Spanish-speaking interviewers, so I could just tape those and have an actual bilingual person do them, though I know that survey well enough to follow along: amistades, actividades, escuela...)



After monitoring, I wound up "testing" -- new survey going out, needs test data generated, utter nonsense will do, and needs bugs caught & typos swatted. It involved high-tech equipment. The supervisor overseeing the testing did not think that my commentary on one of the questions (on a $HIGH_TICKET_EQUIPMENT_PURCHASE, the question was, "Did you get any other equipment with it?" and my quip was, "Would you like fries with that?") would be amusing to the geek in the back room. (I thought it would, but what would I know? I'm only a geek.) Ditto the commentary on a typo: "While the thought of web-enabled pigs amuses greatly, I am forced to conclude that the intended word is 'websites' rather than the given 'websties'."



I really would have preferred to be sitting in a different monitor room. The back monitor rooms have more insulation from the bullpen, and my paranoia index has been up. It's creepy knowing you're being gossiped about, even if half of it you can dismiss as aforementioned paranoia.


Keeping the faith. Maybe Tuesday. I'll ask when I call this weekend.

• Take one shaky Lunatic, and add dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic stress. Ask Lunatic to do something with the dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic melt down and start crying, becoming incapable of any sort of coherent thought.


• Add an 11-5 shift, and several people who weren't seated due to some oversight on the part of the office. Have a last-minute swap of personnel called in by a grandboss. Have one of the personnel in question and another interested party grumble about it.


• Tech fun -- setting up my elder clone's e-mail on a computer resulted in things not looking right with her inbox. Argh? Grr.


• People coming in hostile, late, and reeking of marijuana.


• People coming in chronically late and out of dress code.


• Payday weekend means I get to hand out paychecks too.


• Phone ringing off the hook.


• Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid quit for school, but came in to get his last paycheck. It was fortunate that he did, because right about then his ex-girlfriend (who works there) started having a bad asthma attack. Her inhaler did not seem to dent it. Between her call to someone to come pick her up and waiting for them to call back, it got bad enough she wanted us to call emergency. So I did. Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid got her wheeled out of the area on one of the office chairs to an office by the entrance to wait for the paramedics.


• The interim, of course, is studded with joyful happenings such as more paperwork and the like.


• A woman had a wheel bust on her chair. Yay incident reports. Stressy College Chick had to write one up over that.


• Turned out that the girl with the asthma attack had an asthma attack first, then a panic attack on top of it. Ow.


• Chaos on the hours chart; I either had the right number of people coming in at the wrong times, and no clue where it came from, or too many people, but the right times. Not happiness for anyone, anywhere. All attempts to track it down failed. I eventually went with a reality check and fudged it, which is the appropriate thing to do when it burns more supervisor-hours than the discrepancy.


• Didn't get done with my hours until after break. Postponed my break for this.


• By the time I took my break, almost all the phone goons had left.


• Good Figments should not ever sneak up behind their Lunatics and tap them on the shoulder. No matter how plaid they are. For they will come within yea much of a punch in the nose, and if the Lunatic rolls sanity check in time, she'll be left dealing with the hormone spike.

After all that cleared up, the day improved. But I was dreadfully behind on the paperwork. I usually get out of there about an hour and a half after the last phone goons are out, or sooner if it's an early shift and I have most of my evening tasks out of the way. The Rules Lawyer Monitor has resigned her monitor post; she's a mere phone goon at the moment. The blessed woman stayed and did the ENTIRE cleanup list. I was ready to hug her.

As I told figment0, this was a day that cake could not make better. He nearly earned frosting up the nose for annoying me (by speaking, essentially); this wasn't because he's inherently annoying, but because he's safe enough to drop the professional front in front of, but not a bondmate, and so not attuned to the chaos that is me.

It got better, after everyone left. Stressy College Chick Supervisor chills me out, and I think I help her chill out too. I've always wanted to send an intra-office e-mail with "Alarums and Excursions" in the subject line, and now I have. (Well, not always, but if I'd thought about it, yeah.)