Relentless

...is what the pace of work feels like lately. I was hoping that just having Gestalt's Uber MOB as my one project to work on (instead of five like I had last fall) would make things a little easier. However, I'm at the point where it feels like there's no slowdown in speed and effort and there's no end in sight. I'm just worn down from the speed and quantity of stuff to do. Architects reading this blog may say, "well, yeah, Pixie, that's what we do." But really? Did we all slog through six years of school and ten-plus years of work and a nine-part ARE just to have our daily work lives get reduced to lists of tasks on Post-It Notes and a constant stream of phone calls that almost all begin with the words "Hey, what were we going to do at...?"

This is just a sample of my days leading up to the DD set going out: Sit down at my desk at about 8:10am and look at my list of tasks and phone calls and the stack of progress drawings that I need to review and mark up before Friday; do triage. Ask the intern in charge of the doors: did the door hardware consultant send us his spec and hardware schedule yet? does he know our deadline is Friday? make sure he knows. Email Gretchen, the project manager for Gestalt (I can't call her because her voicemail is full) and ask if we have information on the mobile storage system going in the central sterile department, and if not can I just have the storage consultant's email or phone number and I'll call him myself. open the set of progress drawings and look at the ceiling plans, because Intern Jake is going to need at least two days to get through them. We should have these equipment booms located on these drawings (and dear God, I just remembered as I was typing this that I didn't tell the structural engineer about the ceiling-mounted injectors in the MRI and CT and PET CT rooms), so make that note again. Oh crap, the toilet partitions in the main public toilets should be ceiling mounted--mark that, then start composing email to structural engineer about all the things he needs to know about (equipment booms, toilet partitions, the recessed floor at the MRI room for the RF shielding). Phone call from Intern Max--are we showing the lead thicknesses in the walls of the imaging rooms. or is that for CDs? It's for CDs, but that reminds me that I'm not sure that I've sent the lead shielding reports to the contractor or the structural engineer (crap, and as I typed that I remembered that I need lead shielding in the ceiling of two scan rooms, about which the structural engineer knows nothing). Now to email the appropriate parties about the shielding report. A phone call from the plumbing engineer--the plan doens't show the right thickness of walls at all toilets; these are floor-mounted back-fed toilets, and they need 13" out-to-out to get the pipe out and down through the slab. Can you send me a list of where you're seeing these discrepancies? Push ceiling plans aside and start looking at floor plans--I can see where this needs to be done, but I--wait, ceiling plans first, Intern Jake is going to need those. I have to pee. I look at the clock on the computer monitor: it's 9am. Only 50 minutes have passed, and I've accomplished shit all. And I didn't even hit send on the email with the shielding report.

This is why I'm spending the weekend on the balcony with kittehs and plants.