An Elevator ... Personified

Elevators are awkward; they just are.  They are also oftentimes amusing.  Working downtown, on the 12^th floor, the elevator is unavoidable.  OK, it is avoidable … but I prefer not to sit at my desk sweating. 

I’ve worked downtown going on 7 years now; I take the elevator 3-4 times a day … this post has been a long time coming.  If an elevator had thoughts … they would surely consist of these …

• Easy buddy … no need to jam yourself into the elevator as if you’re going to cease to live if you don’t get on the elevator RIGHT NOW … how about we let the people out of the elevator first…

• Hey nice guy, no need to hold the doors open for everyone and their mother just because you can see them entering the building ... it's called an 'elevator bank' for a reason ... there's more than one...

• Who’s the funny guy facing towards the back of the elevator?  Face front, eyes down, just like everyone else… guy...

• Yes, the camera in the corner is real.  Yes, someone is actually watching you...

• Seriously, guy? You got on at street-level … and you just pressed "1" … ?!?  Reminder, put note above buttons: “if you’re lazy (or pregnant): floors 1-20, if you’re not lazy: Floors 3-20”...

• It’s awkward in here isn’t it … I thought the mirrored walls would help … this way eye-contact is unavoidable...

• Speaking of my mirrored walls … hey lady, this is an elevator, not a powder room...

• Hey guy … I know that no one called you, sent you a text, or emailed you … pulling out your phone and pretending so is lame;  Just cause everyone does it doesn’t make it cool...

• ‘DING’ [door opens] … everybody now, the elevator shuffle:  to the left … to the right… to the back…

• Will someone please give a speech?  Oh, … no one even talks in an elevator?   Then perhaps we should stop using ‘elevator speech’...

• Speaking of figure of speech … Seriously?!? … did someone seriously drop a deuce in their pants?!? Com’on dude … no one is actually supposed to do it!  That is just wrong.  Reminder, check camera for culprit … make mental note to plummet to the ground the next time he gets on...

• And no, guy, jumping will not save you when I plummet to the ground...

• Yes, the alarm button … actually triggers an alarm; hence the word ‘alarm’ on it...

• Speaking of buttons … hey YOU, yes you who's mashing the ‘door close’ button… I get it, I got it the first time you pressed it … your subsequent mashing isn’t going to make the door close any faster...

Closet Overhaul!

It is finished!  As a follow-up to the Teaser post... below are before and after pictures of our closet overhaul.

Before ...

After ... 2 cabinets, 4 cubbies, 4 lockers, 12 hooks, bench (re-purposed table) and floor baskets...

It wasn't without injury ... luckily I had Dora.

Closet Overhaul - Teaser

So we have, well ... had, a standard entryway closet by the garage.  And by 'standard' I mean roughly 5' wide, 2' deep, bi-fold doors and some wire shelving.

Heidi forwarded me the below picture ... "I want this."

  

I rarely balk at a house project.  My wife knows this ... and I'm pretty sure she takes advantage of me.  Nonetheless, I was motivated by the idea but was unfortunately stuck in the office.  

So ... I did what everyone does ... sketch out the project in Microsoft Excel.  Everyone does this - right?  [readers, all three of you, just said: "and ... nerd"].  

I recreated the closet space in a spreadsheet; each cell representing one square inch.  I shaded in areas for the would-be cabinets and bench, and sketched out the lockers/cubbies.  See below, in all its excel beauty:

Pictures of the plan coming to fruition, start to finish, coming soon.

New Light ... More Bees!

You know when you set out to buy something and your sub-conscious assumptions are revealed as the buying process carries on?  I'll explain - two such instances have happened to me over the past year; most recently, for example, when we purchased a minivan [to my fellow man, insert moment of silence here].  

When we set out to shop for said van we had a short list of ‘must haves;’ this list included leather seats (imagine everything gross that potentially can come out of the human body … now imagine it on your new car seat – hence, easily cleaned leather seats), a DVD player to keep the kids preoccupied on road trips, and doors that open and/or close by the push of a button; pretty standard upgrades found in any modern day minivan.  We found one we liked, a 2008 Honda Odyssey … after all; it had everything we needed/wanted.  False.  

The day after we bought it I was running an errand after dinner, it was dark out.  I got half-way down the street and noticed I couldn’t see anything, the lights didn’t turn on; ‘that’s odd, the knob must not be turned to the auto setting’ … or, as it turns out, uber high-tech vans built in 2008 that can essentially drive themselves by the push of a button … didn’t have automatic lights – seriously?!?  With a little food, water and Dora I could leave my children in this thing for over a week and know that they would be perfectly content and well cared for … yet, I have to manually turn on the lights?!?  My lovely wife thought nothing of it, ‘what is the big deal, my previous cars didn’t have that’ … What!  It was then that I realized I had a sub-conscious assumption that any vehicle built primarily by robots would have automatic lights!  How illogical of me … despite the injustice Honda has imparted on me, we’re keeping the van.  Maybe.

So on to the real reason for my post, my apologies for the stream of consciousness on our van, our dumb-manual-lights-van.  It was in context though; I was talking about sub-conscious assumptions.  The other such instance came to light when we bought our house.  We bought our house almost a year ago now, in April ’10.  It was everything we’d hoped for, everything we could have wanted in a house ...  Like the van shopping experience, we had our list of ‘must haves;’ this is the one!  Everything we wanted and more!  Shortly after moving in I realized this house was missing something essential … a stairwell light; I had, and still have, an assumption/expectation that any two-story house with a street-facing stairwell window absolutely has to have an over-sized light hanging from the ceiling.  

Our new home did not; it had a tiny gold-rimmed glass wall sconce mounted about six feet off the ground, producing levels of light equivalent to that of a candle.  The sconce mocked me each and every time I walked the stairs.  

It was time for a new light.  My lovely wife … ‘seems like a lot of work for just a different light’ what!   Installing a new ceiling light would require running new electrical in the attic … without further ado, in less words, more pictures – here is what transpired (oh, and yup … more bees!):

Walking on the rafters, I made my way over to the general area where I would be punching a hole in the ceiling for the new light.  I noticed a couple small abandoned hives, no big deal.  More concerning ... the fairly large gap in my roof line:

I start running the electrical through the insulation and felt something a bid odd; I start brushing away the insulation, uncovering yet another bee hive!  Panic sets in and I seriously start weighing my get-away options, one of which included a pencil dive through the ceiling ...

You can imagine my reaction.  Well, you don't have to, I captured it...

Thanks to the giant gap at the roof line, its freezing in the attic so I had some comfort that the hive was abandoned ... and, well, I was fully prepared to pencil dive through my ceiling in the event I angered some sleeping bees.  I scraped the hive off the wall...

It would have been far too convenient for the hive to only be on the exterior of the wall ... it was everywhere, inside each of the studs...

When all said and done, a good story and a new light ...

Sneak peak of a future blog entry in the above picture - a little stairwell paneling is underway.

cheers,

bw