Busy Weekend

Well, I did NOT get around to building Roscoe's bed, but I did manage to at least purchase the supplies for it. Truth is, work (at my corporate job) has sucked for, like, 2 straight months now, each week getting more nonsensical than the week before. Sometimes when the weekend rolls around I just don't have the energy, brainpower, or patience to follow plans, read a tape measure, get the saws dialed in, etc. 

About 6 months or so ago my boss and his boss got fired (as did another dude), and my group got absorbed by another group. 60 years of company experience got walked right out the door bright and early on a Monday morning, 100% out of the blue. The group's primary ChemE, ME, and EE were dismissed. The ChemE and ME were never replaced, and the EE was only replaced very recently, resulting in a lot of us having to oversee projects this year - in the wake of the firings - we had no experience with. We made it work but it wasn't easy. 

About 3 months ago, a new guy was brought in to manage my group. Both he and the guy he reports to, the guy whose group absorbed mine, are the polar opposite of the guys who got fired. It hasn't been miserable by any means, but it's a very difficult situation to deal with and the bottom line is that I'm pretty sure the new guys in charge want to bring in their own people, not be stuck with a bunch of dudes they simply inherited. Some stuff that happened Friday has made me feel like they're going to start dropping that hammer tomorrow, and if/when that happens, I'm pretty sure I'm the guy who they'll make an example out of. 

Needless to say, I didn't have it in me to do a whole lot of thinking this weekend and I sure as shit couldn't stay focused on much of anything, so...on Saturday I rented a jackhammer and busted up the concrete sidewalk that had been near the previous porch. 

As usual, Freckles was never too far from the action.   

It was pretty mindless work, although that was my first experience with a jackhammer and given that I'm in the worst shape of my life - a 6 month stretch of chaos and stress at work will do that to a person - it was a bit of a workout. I busted up the concrete enough to remove it by hand and later this month I'll get a dumpster parked out front, and I'll get rid of the busted up concrete then. For now it'll just sit in a few piles in the yard. 

I also dug up one of the old porch post footings, which was only a few bricks stacked on top of each other. It's kind of amazing that for the new porch, code says I have to dig a hole 30" deep, 16" in diameter at the bottom and 12" at the top, and fill it with concrete; I'm not saying the bricks worked just as well as the concrete will, but even after 140+ years, those bricks really handn't settled a whole lot.  

That was Saturday. On Sunday. I went out and got stuff for Roscoe's bed as well as some Christmas lights. I've never really put any up, ever, and while the goal is NOT to become Clark W. Griswold, I wanted to get some up this year. 

Aside from trimming a few tree limbs and cleaning 9 tons of leaves and acorns off the roof - which I just did all of about a week ago - that's what I did, I hung Christmas light along the cornice at the front and one of the sides of the house. I wanted to hang more, but just draping the few strands that I got up was kind of a challenge because 1, the cornice is kinda dicey in some spots and 2, I didn't have a lot of material with which to affix Christmas lights to bricks, mortar, or the goofy liquid flashing the roof has on top of the parapet.

But I got the lights up, about like I wanted, and I even got BOTH dogs to sit on the front porch for pics. Granted, I didn't get both dogs out there at the same time because the odds of that working out were zero, but still, that was kind of a big moment for Freckles. Roscoe would sit out there or do whatever I asked him to do for as long as I asked him to do it. Freckles, on the other hand...she's still learnin' and easily distracted by anything and everything...so I was pretty surprised - proud, even - when she sat still for me for a few seconds.

That was the weekend, jackhammering and Christmas lights and trying not to think too much about the blessing in disguise that may be another round of firings at work tomorrow.