Tchochkes

Today was a bit of a blow-off day. We're playing musical offices yet again, so people were boxing up possessions and files, and tossing lots of good stuff they'd collected over the years. One person suggested using the empty office next to hers for a book swap. That quickly became a "swap anything" room. A space heater, boom box, leather wallet, computer carrying case, and other assorted trinkets appeared along with the books.

I donated a couple of soccer balls I'd gotten from a Hispanic ad agency conference a few years ago. Lo and behold, I found an AOL-logo backpack that looked as if it had never been used. Score! There was also an unwanted company mug. Someone had stolen mine right off my desk one year, between Christmas and New Year's, when I was using my last few vacation days. Replacement mug--score!

As I was boxing up the contents of my former boss' office, I found something in a really large K-Mart bag. It turned out to be a seat cushion. My boss couldn't use it with his chair (no spindles on our leather executive chairs on which to tie the strings), but I had a use for it at home.

If anyone had sat on it before, it hadn't been often enough to make a tush imprint. My old one on my computer chair, which is really just a wooden kitchen table-type chair, fell apart some time ago. My chair has back spindles. I'd been sitting on a sofa pillow that had a nasty tendency to slide around on the seat. Score!

I really wanted to at least move my boxes into my new office (lost my window office, although I didn't land in a Dilbert cell), but the current occupant wasn't in today, and her door was locked. Hope she's ready to move Monday, because there are two people waiting to move into my office temporarily, until their new cubes can be built. They can't move in until I move out, and I can't do that until Janet moves out.

We all have to be moved by Tuesday, so demolition can begin. That's always fun--working in an office while construction and demolition are going on in the hallways. Try having a conference call on speaker-phone and see how long it takes for one of the other parties to tell you to hit the mute button. I'm hoping they'll let me work from home that week, and remote in to my computer. I don't even need to lug a laptop home with me to do it.

Gary, my former assistant, is going to be paid for a little consulting/freelance work. He's moved on to another employer full-time. There are a few loose ends with a database he created, he's familiar with the project, and he wants to earn a few extra bucks on the side. He came down over lunch hour to talk about it. Fortunately, since it was moving/boxing day, we had a pizza party lunch, and he got a slice of cold pizza and a soda. Actually, it was almost cold 45 minutes earlier when I had a slice. We warned him, but a hungry guy will eat just about anything.