The weekend was grand! No, the weather wasn’t stellar, but it also wasn’t awful (dry, some sunbreaks, but quite windy). A fair amount of tedious work (cleaning those windows, painting the inside of the closets, working on the ceiling channel), but it felt good to get ‘r done, or at least make progress. And there were moments of total bliss. Like, sitting on the huge waterside deck in the mornings with a fire in the fire thingy, drinking coffee, peering out at the water, chatting, and chuckling at the dogs/cat (just Wylie, as Mojo missed the bus). The big leftover pile of metal roofing was finally GONE from the deck (Lee and a helper moved it last week) and what a difference! 700 square feet of deck, baby! I love that deck! (We could host a dance party! Room enough for a live band!) And the little deck (Wiener Deck) on the other side of the house that faces the trees is also wonderful. We ate lunch and dinner out there on the little café table that used to be up on the trailer deck.
It’s also fun to “camp” in the house. The glass studio is a perfect temporary setup for our bed, plus there are cupboards and a nice countertop and sink in there. The deck furniture we purchased a couple of months ago works great for my laptop and John’s jig saw puzzles. The guest bathroom is far from finished, but the toilet is installed and John recently got the tub shower working and we both “partook” this weekend. It’s a little rough, but actually very nice! No tile yet, but it’s secured with “cement board” that is waterproof. Nice shower! Great water pressure, spacious, awesome. That tub is a leeetle bit difficult to climb in and out of, though. Hmm.
And then, the “kitchen!” Totally functional, especially since the refrigerator is in there and John also brought down the 28-year-old propane stove and microwave from the trailer.
John finally got the animals to start using the pet door by holding up and securing the two flaps. It’s those flaps (and especially because there are two of them instead of just one like we have here at home) that was intimidating them. We’ll let them acclimate and appreciate the freedom of coming and going, then we’ll start putting down the flaps one-by-one. Mojo might have the most difficult time with it, since he’s not fond of the ONE flap here at home. He always has to work himself up toward heading outside (not so much coming inside). He’s a cautious fellow. Which is a good thing.
I made a big pot of “sloppy” rice (with lots of extra water) combined with boiled chicken for Peanut’s Hershey squirt issue, and it looks like it’s working. I’ve had to feed it to BOTH dogs to alleviate confusion and angst (and the strong possibility that Peanut would join Bailey with eating her dogfood out of her bowl if I fed them different food). They both LOVE IT! I suppose it’s because it’s **people food!!** and that cracks me up because it’s totally bland. No seasoning whatsoever. But hey. Whatever works.
So, my Monday was not grand. (What else is new?) My appointment this morning to (finally) have the stent removed in my eye/nose from my tear duct obstruction surgery was a complete bust. The doctor couldn’t access it (through my nose) to remove it because it’s tucked behind my “deviated septum.” He said, “If I did this, it would be very painful.” So I’m going to have to go back to the surgery center in Tacoma and be placed under general anesthesia so he can remove the damned thing (5 minutes tops). I don’t know yet when that will be—he had room on his schedule for tomorrow, but John isn’t available to drive me. The doctor is booked up throughout July (probably with breast augmentations and the like—yup, he’s a plastic surgeon). In the meantime, my eye continues to weep, although not as horrifically as it did before the surgery. It’s removing the stent that will (supposedly) improve the tearing. What a fucking ordeal this whole thing has been.
And then? Chucklehead (who knows absolutely nothing about A/E marketing, or about layout and design, or about anything at all) has decreed that “the font from here on out for marketing proposals will be Arial.”
- Rules of typography and readability: Sans serif for headings (like Arial) and serif for running text (like Georgia, which you see here, and what is used in proposals). What he is “decreeing” is a total antithesis of standard usage and professionalism. I refuse. If he wants to fire me over it, so be it.
- I WILL NOT BE MICROMANAGED BY A TOTAL IDIOT. PERIOD.
- And I will tell him: “Focus instead on the Denver office stepping up to writing/editing coherent proposals.”
Case in point: I worked with the so-called “marketing” person from our Denver office last (godawful) week and was gobsmacked. Not a writing/editing skill to be found (she is NOT a marketer, because this company’s attitude is “any monkey can do this”), and the engineers in that office are by far the worst I’ve ever seen in 34 years in technical writing “skills.” I agreed to edit and proof the proposal they were working on last week and it made me want to vomit. Here is an example of just ONE sentence:
"The outage planning included design planning to incorporating modularization to minimize the outage duration and the scheduling of normal plant annual maintenance to be in parallel to reduce the overall annual plant production loss."
THIS. This is what the focus should be! Not what fucking FONT I use in my proposals (that WIN 90% of the time!) It’s the WRITING. It’s the ability to REWRITE the crap for readability and to MAKE SENSE. It’s about professionalism, of which this company has not a grasp. Hiring Chucklehead cemented that.
I’m so sick of this shit.
