4 posts tagged “construction”

Today, I hate everybody. 

Construction up the block woke me up early this morning.  For days and days (all last week), they didn't work on the 19th Street project, but this morning, they started at 6 am?  Drilling near the water main, so every pipe in the house rattled.

I left my breakfast sitting on the kitchen counter--my fault.  So I walked up to the Union for some croissants and some coffee to cheer me up.  No croissants.  The kid in the bakery just shrugged when I asked him why.  There are chunks of burned milk in my cafe au lait.  Not my fault.

Outside my office, they're tearing up the road behind the building...and they're getting ready to rip out the little tree outside my window.  The lovely little tree that provides me shade in the summer and a place for birds and skwerls to hang out.  Where will Stumpy come to get my apple cores when the tree is gone?  And it's not like I can complain--they're ripping out the tree to put in a new handicap entrance to the building, which is desperately needed.

Also, there are people who need to communicate with me who aren't.  Who just aren't saying anything important that needs to be said. 

Of course, it could be worse.  I could be unemployed or homeless or in need of a handicap entrance or starving in Somalia or chained by the neck in a Columbian jungle or or or.  It could be a lot worse, but that doesn't make me hate everybody less.  It makes me hate everybody more. 

My whole life is under construction these days.

At home, my sisters came to visit over the weekend to help me get my basement half-bath functional.  It's a nasty little specimen of manly gas-station hell hole proportions.  So we yanked the toilet and sink, scrubbed the stone walls, installed sheetrock on the open studs on one side, moved wiring, installed a new light fixture, reinstalled the sink brackets, and after I paint, I'll reinstall the sink and toilet.  You think I'm crazy for home remodeling, imagine me plus two 'Zilla sisters.  All of us inherited the "I don't know, but I'm not afraid, and I'll figure it out," gene from our mother, so we pretty much waded in and wrought havoc until we reached the other side with most of the work done.  (I even managed to do some re-wiring, although traditionally I'm the plumber and Hubbicula is the electrician.)  Today, I'm nursing some blisters and a burn on my drill bracing hand, and a pair of enormous bruises--one on the inside of my arm and the other on my right boob--my drill grip.  Because drilling into limestone and concrete requires all the body weight I can bring to it, plus one of my sisters leaning into my back.

At work, my whole office was covered in a fine layer of dust when I came in this morning.  Perhaps concrete dust.  Perhaps asbestos dust.  Perhaps magic pixie dust.  Perhaps stripper dust.  At any rate, the electricity was off in the whole building this weekend, so we came back to some interesting things--like a defrosted fridge and a fax machine on the fritz. 

On the walk to work, they've ripped up the street north of my house.  The street I have to cross to get to work.  Last week, I was able to simply sneak past the barricades and scurry across the street, which had been stripped down to its underlayment.  I felt like a political dissident, trying to sneak across the Demilitarized Zone to the safety of South Korea.  This morning, I found they'd gouged long channels three feet wide and two feet deep into the underlayment and piled mountains of dirt everywhere.  So, no more sneaking across the DMZ to safety.  I had to walk three blocks over, one block up, then three blocks back to get to my regular work route.

I think I'm ready for a vacation.

Oh, the saga of foundation repairs in Brain Tumor Hall continues.

Right now, at 4:57 pm, there are six construction workers and three frowning engineers standing under my window, staring at the wall below my office.  The wall in which they've already cut a giant hole through which to pass steel I-beams for the construction project, and in which they later plan to install windows for the Classics department.

Here are just a few snippets of the conversation these people are having under my window:

"See?  But that's where the plate's supposed to go."
"Is it?"
"Well, the beam comes to an end right here and our plans show it's bolted to the plate there."

"What's that?"
"Oh, we'll just resurface that when we're done."

"Has it shifted since yesterday?"
"Not that we can tell."
"Have you measured it?"
"Against what?"

"Is that a problem?"
"Is what a problem?"
"That."

Oh, look, it's time for me to run away.

Okay, the renovations of the basement of Brain Tumor Hall have on occasion been annoying and amusing. 

Annoying = listening to someone jackhammer directly under your feet for an hour. 

Amusing = listening to someone jackhammer directly under your feet for half an hour while a Dean is talking to the faculty committee about how the renovations aren't going to disturb the department.  The look on his face was priceless.

Today, though, is really pushing me.  Right now, as I type, there is a massive cement truck parked below my office window and it is pumping concrete into the basement of BT Hall through a large hole that has been punched in the side of the building, directly below my office.  (Oh and the lights are flickering every ten seconds or so.)  This is no longer annoying or amusing.  This is fucked up.  They start work every day at 4:00 pm.  Why?  Because most classes are over by then?  News flash, Provost Asshat: all the secretaries in BT Hall are required to work from 8-5.  Why can't the construction work start at 5?

This shit keeps up and I'm going to start praying for Provost Asshat to get colon cancer.