Behind the Scenes at ActiveRain

I get really stressed out when there is no plan to an event going on; Jon learned this this weekend (if he didn't know it already) when I was like, "Are you going to Miami?" in eight different emails because I hadn't booked him a ticket home yet.

We're facing down an office move from where we are now to about five miles away in the city just north of us.  It really shouldn't affect anything going on online, but the office itself is going to be in slight chaos -- at least from my perspective -- for the next couple days.  So if you get a woman who sounds severely stressed out on the phone when you call in...I'm sorry. It's me.

In any case, I've taken over the moving plans, which means that I have to get together the actual movers, the site we're moving to, get everyone to pack up their stuff, deal with walk-through issues, make sure everyone's out by the first, and still manage to maintain my sanity.

Big job? Pft. I laugh at thee.

I'm a list person, so I already have six lists and a master list of things I need to get done to make sure this goes without a hitch.  Chances are that hitches will appear anyway (sigh), but with any luck, I'll navigate them accordingly.  I know I can count on the guys here in the office to do as I ask them and support me when I need it, so I'm hardly worried that there will not be enough hands. 

My biggest fears are...  what if our movers bail on us?  What if the management company's a real jerk when they come down for the walk through?  What if we don't get out in time?  What if the company that's coming for our extra furniture bails?

My job has always been to come up with contingency plans, so over the last few days, with Jon gone on his trip, that's precisely what I've been doing.  Here's to hoping I don't have to use them.

I'm sitting here, next to a stack of about 100 letters, all of which have arrived over the last few days at AR HQ.  The mail always comes to me; most of it is bills or notices from various people we work with.  I just know this stack is going to take me all day.

Aren't we supposed to be a paperless society?  Here's my thoughts:  Let's do away with the US Postal Service completely.  That's right! No more mail! It would FORCE people to go electronic to get their business done; spam mail could be routed more efficiently, and bills could be automatically filtered into a separate file.

Wouldn't that make life so much more efficient?  I like efficiency, if you couldn't tell.  I integrate my calendar, my notebooks, and my email all in the same application so that I don't have to switch back and forth.

Now, if I could only get the USPS and AR into that very same program, I would be the happiest girl on earth!

One of the nice things about the AR office and the company itself is that people actually take the time to go and have lunch.  Three out of five days, the company actually buys lunch for us staffers.  It's one of the best perks I've ever had in a position, simply because whether we decide to BS or get down to actual work discussions (like we did today), it kind of helps the employees connect on a personal as well as professional level.

Usually, I drive if we're going out, or if we're going to just pick something up to eat.   So no problem... my routine goes like this: Grab keys and wallet, lock door, head to the car.  Today, I decided not to drive and asked Jorgen to do so instead.  He was delighted!  We had a fantastic lunch - him, me, and Mike, another of our developers - at a fancy schmancy burger joint downtown.

With everyone fat and happy, we returned to the office and a sudden sense of foreboding washed over me.  Had I really done it? Really?  I tested the doorknob.

Yes.  Yes.  Ms. Super-Responsible, On-The-Ball, 110% locked herself out of her own office.  Not the main office, mind you, but my own little office in the back.  And my keys were on my desk inside. I've been off lately; overtired, feeling a cold coming on, and obviously not entirely perceptive of my actual actions.

Crap, I thought and went next door to get help from the management guys; turns out that they were already gone for the weekend.  Double crap!  So I left them a note and returned to our office.  "Jorgen," I asked in my sweetest, nicest voice, "Would you IM Bob?  He has a master key."

In about half an hour, Bob appeared and went to try his keys on my door.  Turns out that the man DOESN'T have a master key.  Whoops.  Crap. So I go searching for the management guys again while he tries all manner of keys in the office laying about in other peoples' desk.  Yet again, I'm unsuccessful in finding anyone to help.

When I returned, Bob is armed with a letter opener and is sliding it along the jamb of my door, popping the nails out on the center casing moulding so that the actual lock mechanism is visible.  I watched, stunned, and then laughed when I realized what he was doing.  Once that casing was pulled out, he straightened the letter opener and poked the mechanism.  *CLICK* my door swung open into my office.

"I swear," he said, "I've never used that for nefarious purposes."

Mmmmhmmm... who wants to bet that Bob moonlights as a cat burglar?

Jon saying, from his office, as he sat down, "Bananas make me happeeeeeeeeee!"

I walked into the office this morning to be greeted by an icy burst that was something akin to when you've been out running around in the hot, July sunshine and come in to get a green popsicle from the freezer.  WHOOSH.  The cold air whistled by me and busted into the warm, glass-encased hallway.

Brrr, I thought, someone's been messing with the heat again.  There's a constant war over the thermostat between some of the part-time realtors who use some of our space and those of us in the main offices who are constantly freezing our tucuses off.  Because the widget is located in the part of the office that they occupy, they surreptitiously turn down the heat over time, trying to trick us into believing that it's just a fluke of the system.

But no, when I went to check on the thermostat, the heat was on, the fan was on, and ... the air that was blowing was cold.  Still.  On Thursday, I'd asked the management company to send out a tech to fix the heater when it broke, and they were supposed to have done that on Friday.  So imagine my absolute frustration when I'm standing in veritable winter-territory, gritting my teeth at a machine that's supposed to work, and just knowing (JUST KNOWING) that the first thing everyone said when they walked in was going to be "Man, it's cold in here, can you turn up the heat?".

So I marched my pink shoes over to the management office again and knocked, explained the problem and why I cared, and asked them again to get us some help.  Apparently, the heating company did come out and check, but the entire system had failed, and now they have to replace everything.  Best estimate they can give us is Wednesday.

Here I am, now, sitting in front of my computer, scarf and jacket on, and fingerless gloves protecting my hands.  I'm already a cold-blooded creature...I feel like railing to the sky, "Is winter over YET?!"

It's been a long week here at the AR HQ.  And it's only Thursday!

Monday - The boys flew back from Orlando on Monday, and so the office was quiet as a mouse.  My office, on the other hand, was busybusy and I pushed boxes of shirts out the doors to those who have been waiting so patiently.  I'm still not through the entire list (grr) but I will get there!

Tuesday - With Bob in an all-day session with our investors, Jeff in SoCal handling some personal stuff, our skeleton crew was happy to see Jon come back to the office, even if he was the only one of the three that we actually saw.  Unfortunately, with him having been gone for five days, I had to bug him for umpteenth million things, check signatures, calendar updates, etc.  The poor guy barely got to sit down.  Bright side: bills are paid and the checks are in the mail. WOOT!  On top of that, I went through 300 New Support Tickets that had been unattended while the boys were in Orlando.

Wednesday - Still no sign of Jeff, although Bob did appear and worked most of the day with us here in the office.  He was straaaaaangely quiet, however.  Jon was out all day, so it was back to the (mostly) skeleton crew.  Wednesday tends to be a weird day for me, because it's not Monday and it's not Friday -- nowhere near, in fact.  I put together some notes on our upcoming move and balanced the books.  Plus...I called in payroll, which means everyone gets paid! WOOT.

Thursday - Today!  Today is my Friday, so I've been running at all cyllinders to make sure that everything will be okay when I'm gone tomorrow.  Rich is here, Jeff and Bob should both be here, and Jon is...well, not here.  Oh well.  I suppose I'll have to make Rich choose what's for lunch today, since he's never in the office and has blessed us with his presence on this beautiful, blue-skyed Thursday.

Friday - I am off!  Saturday is my 25th birthday, so I am taking Friday as a mental health day to just enjoy being elderly and decrepit (winkwink, nudgenudge).  I should probably like...get drunk or something ;) 

(Those who know me well know I rarely even drink, let alone get drunk.  That was a joke.)

In any case! If you've been asking for help this week, chances are you've seen my name in your email box asking you for information about your problem.  Or, if you've called, you've heard my voice on the end of the line.  I hope things are running a bit smoother for you all!

I left around my normal time yesterday and headed up to Everett for a write-in.  Saying goodbye to those of us left behind as our more public faces went to NAR for the week, I hopped in my car and sped away.

This morning, I unlocked the door, walked through the dark office and disarmed the alarm, and when I flipped the switch on and light flooded the room...I laughed.  Our guys must have been bored last night after I left; knowing some of them, they were probably here until well past dinnertime working, so it's not like they were shirking their duties any, but to see the office in a jumble from what they left behind, I had to giggle.

 I wonder who played drums?  Probably Glin. He's pretty musically inclined, although I haven't yet asked Mike, our new developer, if he can play music.  Jorgen's your typical geeky-type, so I imagine he probably did just fine; he's also the most outgoing of the three, so if I had to guess, I'd say he was the one who took up the microphone to sing.

I really wish someone had taken pictures last night...although, that would, of course, mean evidence of their transgressions (as if the scene of the crime wasn't enough for conviction).

I left it exactly the way it was so that the authorities can see upon entrance.  There appears to be no victims in this crime, except, perhaps, the janitor that had to sweep around their leftovers.  Poor janitor - always getting the short-end of the broom handle.

All I want to know is... Who's going to clean up this mess?

With NAR on the rise, many of our members have emailed or left comments telling me that they can't wait to meet me at the conference, and I, sadly, am forced to tell them that I won't be there to meet them, because when something goes wrong, you need a person at homebase to patch it up and make the CEO look good.

This is why I stay behind.

Yesterday, I got a frantic email from Jon's wife; she was obviously stressed out, and mentioned that the guys had left behind a couple of boxes of T-Shirts to be shipped down to NAR so that they would have them during the conference to give out.  It was probably about 2pm; me, naturally, went into "I can't handle anything else until this is fixed" mode, because I want, so badly, for NAR to go well. 

SUPER CLAIRE!!! TO THE RESCUE!

So I pulled up the address and phone number for the concierge at Jon's building, called him quickly and told him that I was trying to get ahold of Jon's wife, and if he saw her before I was able to reach her, to let her know that I was on my way.  I shot an email back to her and snapped up my keys, told Jorgen I was running out and I wouldn't be back in time -- I'd see him tomorrow.

I must have been talking really fast, because he made kind of a squinty-eyed face as I left him in his dark hole of an office.

On the freeway going across 520 in rush hour, my sister calls.  I picked up the phone and said, "Hi.  I'm driving.  Can't talk.  Call you back." and *CLICK* hung up the phone.  (Thankfully, my sister forgave me later)  I'm really, really bad with directions and I hate being in downtown Seattle during the day, so I really had no idea where Jon's address was located.  All I knew is that it was somewhere near the lake.

Still! I found it!  And when I got there, rung his wife on the cell again, "Hi! I'm outside your building.  I'm here for the boxes."  She told me she'd be down in just a second, and begged me to forgive the state of the condo (side note... it really wasn't that bad.  MY apartment is eight times more messy than their condo could ever be.  What a gorgeous place!). 

Once she came down, we grabbed a wheely cart, loaded the boxes onto it, and then jaywalked them across two lanes of on-coming traffic in front of a police station to make use of the ramps onto the sidewalk, and finally got them loaded into the car.

That was just the beginning.

Apparently, there's a FedEx about a block away.  What Google maps failed to take into account was that it was completely inaccessible, and the presence of a loitering cop car makes certain stressed-out redheads PRETTY nervous!  So I hopped on I-5 and headed north, instead; I had a speech to give at a function later on that night, and I knew of a FedEx right near it! 

Traffic, however, was just simply awful.  By then, we were rounding the 4pm mark, and I JUST KNEW that the cut-off had to be around 5pm.  It was pouring (for the first time in days) and getting dark, so naturally, all the Seattlites were like, "OH TEH NOES -- the dark monsters are going to get me, and then the rain monsters will eat what's left over for dessert!" and slowed down by 20mph under the speed limit.

I learned to drive in DC.  I hate stupid drivers, and so as frustrated as I already was by the whole thing, I sat in traffic for another 30 minutes trying to go five miles. 

Luckily, I caught the overnight driver just as he was headed toward the door when I finally reached FedEx, "Oh! Oh Sir! Wait!  I have two more!'

I set the boxes on the tailgate of the uberhuge truck and he laughed, telling me that I was there just by the skin of my teeth.  So I smiled prettily and said, "I'm so sorry, it's been just a rotten day.  Could you tape these up for me?"  And tape, he did.  A couple of labels stuck on later and booyah! The shirts were finally on their way to Florida.

Now, I can't say WHY these shirts are important, but trust me, they are.  And without them, the guys would have been pretty SOL on their idea for the NAR Party.  As much as I'd love to attend some of these conferences, our company like any company needs a fall-back guy (girl?) to handle the minor emergencies when they happen.

But if any of you are ever in Washington....stop on by! I'd love to meet you!

"And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too...To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope...America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do." (via the Baltimore Sun)

I am a Democrat, as many may have guessed or read, so I was, naturally, pleased by the fact that our new President Elect is Barack Obama.  This opens a new chapter of history in our nation's great book, not just because we voted in a new president, but because this one breaks the mentality -- the mental "mold" -- regarding what a president should look like, how old he should be, and what sort of campaign he should run. 

To be honest, I avoided election coverage yesterday.  I casted my vote, and after that, my job was done; I get very anxious during elections and so I wrote words into my novel instead of attending a poll party or watching the newscasts.  Around 8pm, my sister Twittered a DM at me and said, "McCain conceeded."

It was then that I opened up the MSNBC website and watched McCain's speech, then Obama's.  If there is anything I can say about McCain, it's that he gave a very gracious concession speech, even going so far as to pledge to work with Obama, to continue "reaching across the aisle", and tamping down on the boos from his fans.  There is nothing like a sore loser, and I, for one, am glad to see a politician show a little class when he gets the short end of the stick.

On the other hand, I found it ironic that the Obama family wore red when the Dems' unofficial color is blue.  Perhaps I'm the only one who found that a little odd as far as wardrobe choice went, but you know... I'm a girlie girl.  I notice things like that.  My opinion of Obama's speech was that he was trying to empower the people and bolster confidence in the decision of the Electoral college.  I admit that it struck my heart and yes, a few tears MIGHT have shown if you were nearby and watching (Not that I ever cry over politics, geez - what a softie).

Like Princess Di's death and 9-11, I think that I'll probably always remember where I was and what I was doing when I listened to that speech.  Perhaps some of our voters are not happy people today, but I, for one, hope that Obama was speaking honestly when he said that even though he didn't have part of the nation's vote, he would still be those peoples' president, too.

My hope for the next eight years is that Americans truly come together as one people and continue to chip away at the divides that affect us as a society.  I want, so desperately, for our nation to back our leaders and their decisions, for our people to truly want to improve their country, and for our leaders to represent our interests as well as they possibly can represent so many people.

As I keep saying: Hope is frail, but hard to kill.  Keep those hopes alive, America.

NOTE: My blog is not a battleground, and criticisms and harsh words are not welcome here.  We just had a massive election and it's still fresh in many peoples' minds; let's look to the future and try to make our country better instead of slinging mud at one party or another.

Well, I'm not telling! I have personally finished up all the paperwork connected to the party and can tell you that it's going to be a doozy.  I'm kind of sad that I won't be there to see it, but I expect pictures, lots and lots of pictures!

But here's Rich to tease you all a little bit: