Monday, April 23, 2007

Much ado about nothing...to do

I find myself in the rare and odd position for being underemployed right now. Now that Jacqueline's back, Howie has pulled me off of Pomme de Terre. I suppose that's not a bad thing, per se; after all, who needs the madness? However, working on that project was helping other people and giving me something to do with at least 20 hours of my time per week. Meanwhile, Wheatlands is winding down in a big way. My next punchlist is a week from today, and the next one will be two weeks after that. Now that the building's nearly done, there's not much left for me to do. A couple of weeks ago, I was foisted onto a small office project for Prudence, the head of our interiors department. While Prudence's project has been able to fill in my 40 hours for the past couple of weeks, I'm at the point where I either need to take these drawings all the way to construction-document quality or I need to find something else to do to help fill out 40 hours.

MCRC has yet to begin...still. They've purchased a site, but now they need someone to run the hospital while the doctors who own it practice pshychiatry instead of fill out paperwork. (They had a guy who was gonna run it, but his experience was more towards regular hospitals, not psych facilities.) Howie keeps sending me heads-ups on different little projects that are just barely beginning, trying to keep me busy and in the loop on something, anything, but I'm just not fully busy.

At this point, I'm first going to check with Prudence as to how developed does she want this little set of interior tenant infill drawings. After that, I have a couple of people to talk to that Howie said need help. However, I'm a little concerned because the teams Howie mentioned are working, or about to start working, in Revit, which I have yet to use in earnest.

It's weird how tired you can be after a long day of stretching 6 or 7 hours worth of work into 8. It's a double-edged sword, stretching work. In the short run, it's not a bad thing. You try to spread out your hours for a few weeks, and then something starts up and you're busy again and it's all good. But if you have to stretch for more than a couple of weeks, it'll wear you down, especially if you're stretching your time on projects that aren't yours and you don't particularly enjoy and have a hard time taking ownership of. I'm strangely tired and, despite the fact that the sun is coming up earlier and earlier each morning, I'm having a hard time getting out of bed to work out and get started each morning.

Architectural work--business, indeed--is cyclical like this. You're busy, then you're not, then you are, then you're not. It's just how it is. Gotta say I'd rather be busy as hell than bored as hell.

2 comments:

Enginerd said...

I agree. It is very hard work to fill an 8/10/12 hr day if you don't have stuff waiting for attention. It makes the day drrraaaaagggggg.

When I was a shift supervisor, it was the quiet shifts that went on forever. The crazy, oh-shit how did that happen-shifts flew by and then you got to go home. Tired, but not necessarily drained.

enjoy the peace and quiet. Your time will come, eh? If you need distractions of a non work variety I have TONS of innernets links I can share.

Anonymous said...

Another reason to drink beer! Where would you like me to send the beer?