Been Awhile - Ya Miss Me Yet?!?!

Bad blogger!  Bad, bad blogger!  I know I've been absent lately, and I'm sure you're all SOOO happy to see me again!  (Insert large amount of sarcasm here, just for fun.)  I'm happy to report that I've actually been busy at work!  Wow.  I can't believe that's an actual highlight of my life right now.  How pathetic is that?  There was a time when I'd have been beyond happy to be able to fuck around on the computer for an hour.  Now I'm excited that I had actual work to do.  I think I may need to seriously re-evaluate my working situation, and soon.

Either way, that's where I've been.  My boss had me working on a take off for a job in Joliet.  As soon as I was done with that he handed me another take off for a job in Prairie Hills, and before I was even finished with that he'd handed me yet another take off for a job in Barrington.  Whew.  In case you were wondering, a take off is simply going through a set of plans, determining where there's glass, and getting the measurements for that glass.  This could be glass in door and/or windows - depending on what our scope of work is for that particular job.  It's a little more complicated than just looking at "pictures", but that's the basis of it.  There are others in my office who can do an entire take off in a day.  I however, being mathematically retarded, cannot.  Others can simply look at a drawing that is 10 feet 3 inches wide by 7 feet 2-3/8 inches tall, and based on the number of horizontal and vertical metal pieces in the window (they're called mullions, by the way) know that each piece of glass is x feet by x feet.  I cannot.  I need my pencil, calculator and PLENTY of scratch paper.  Leave me alone though and I'll get it for you, I just can't do it in my head like some of these savants.  Don't even get me started on what I go through if there are no sizes on the drawings and I have to measure them out using a scale.. Oh crap.

(Ha!  I was actually able to post a picture!  I'm a dork, but figuring out how to do that is sort of cool to me!  Above is a scale.  It's kind of like a ruler, but it's got three sides.  Each side has two different measurements.  Similar to how a map will have a legend - 1/4 inch equals 1 mile - all plans have a legend as well telling us how big a foot measures.  With this scale I can figure out fairly quickly how big a piece of glass is if the scale is in 1/8" increments.  Blah, blah, blah... I know.  Boring, but such is my life.)

I just got a call from L.  Their dad is coming into town this weekend so I'm going to be kid free!  Woo hoo!  On the downside of that, L has a soccer game Sunday morning that her dad is going to take her to, yet I need to be   That means I'm going to be forced to endure his company for 1 1/2 hours on Sunday.  Will it be rude of me to sit as far away from him on the sidelines as I can possibly get?  Would it be ruder still for me to act as though I have no clue who he is?  Just the thought of being in the same vicinity of him for anything longer than 10 minutes makes me want to vomit.  This is a guy who I have two kids with.  A guy who I lived with for 5 years.  Yet the thought of sharing space with him make me physically ill.  How pathetic is that?  Maybe the title to this post should be "How Pathetic Am I?"