mmmm....insomnia

well, i rarely get up during the night to do something when i'm in the throes of insomnia but i couldn't imagine laying in bed for another 4 hours thinking about stuff & feeling hungry. so here i am @ quarter to 2 on this friday morning, eating cheerios in the kitchen. good times.

so what's keeping me awake?? (prepare yourself, this is gonna be boring.) well, the big thing at the moment is the garage door at work. the offices & warehouse are located in an OLD car dealership. it's kinda run down & from what i hear, the landlord's not terribly attentive with building upkeep & maintenance issues. anyway, we had 2 volunteers in yesterday working on the garage door - the garage door had been hit a few times with work vans & a few of the wood panels needed replacing. the volunteers who worked on it are these 2 old guys who come in every tuesday & thursday to repair broken tools, build shelving & keep up the woodshop. one of them was a cabinet maker back in the day. anyhow, they dismantled the bottom section of the door to replace the damaged pieces & did a wonderful job. the trouble was in the reattaching...

long story short, the garage door had to be back together at the end of the day to secure the building. they had a bit of trouble reattaching the bottom portion - things weren't lining up correctly, issues adjusting the tension on the spring... (technical crap that i don't really understand). we ended up propping the door open with some 8' studs in order to get the work trucks back in the garage, figuring we'd just remove the props & close the door. after scavenging a few more bodies to help us lower the door by hand so it didn't slam into the ground, the door jammed - the left side dropped lower than the right & the right side fell out of the track. pretty great. (the workday for construction staff ends @ 4, mind you.) so there was lots of fidgeting & eventually we got a neighbor (mechanic renting shop space from the same landlord w/ a similar garage door) to come help out. he unbolted some big thing that attached it to the motor & then removed the cables from the door, allowing the sheer weight of the door to force it closed.

why the hell am i worrying about this at 2 in the morning? well, i don't know how we're going to get it back in working condition & it's not really anyone's deal to fix it. the landlord's out of town. basically, the work trucks have to get out in order for the staff to get to their respective sites with whatever volunteers they have & get done what needs to be done today so they can do what's on the schedule tomorrow. (saturday is a big volunteer day & it's important to be on top of everything.) i don't see how we're going to get the cables reattached to the door. we have to raise it about a foot off the ground in order to attach the cables but i think the door's way too heavy to lift. we propped it open w/ a 5 gallon paint bucket while disassembling the cables & the weight of the door began crushing the bucket. basically, i think we're kind of screwed. there must be a way but my brain is spinning & spinning & not getting anywhere. it was only my 3rd day & i'll be the 1st to admit i know NOTHING about garage doors.

maybe this isn't a big deal at all. dunno. i don't know who will be able to fix it or how soon - we have a full staff meeting this morning until 9 & i have meetings with managers after that.... so, that's that.

i was also laying in bed thinking about fleet maintenance - another part of my job. don't know what i was thinkinb about specifically... finding a shop where we can open an account (& receive a discounted rate) for all the routine vehicle maintenance.

in general, i think the job's going ok so far. tuesday i was feeling a bit crappy about it. i'm not enthusiastic about the renovations - the space planning is so poor sometimes, it's impossible for a homeowner to actually use a room (ex. a small living room, 8x8, that has so many doorways & travel paths it ends up a large foyer...) & i don't agree with their use of materials. in the past year or so, i've become a little nuts about using materials that aren't exactly healthy because of their manufacturing method or the actual chemicals in the finished product & the off-gassing. when i walk into a finished house & am overwhelmed by chemical fumes, i cringe. all those nasty smells are chemicals being released (think paint, sheet vinyl, carpet, particle board cabinets, laminate flooring). they can actually make people very sick & yet it's acceptable to use them because it's just what we do. so, there's that. & i knew going into it that the design & materials used would really bother me. i'm trying not to get too obsessed with those things at this point. maybe i can bring about change at some point in the future... after i'm a bit more settled.

also, i need to figure out how to get the construction staff to trust me. at this point, i don't think they know what my job is (even though i'm replacing someone else) & i'm sure they know nothing of my background. i feel like i need to prove myself knowledgable w/ construction by working on site with them, otherwise they'll never come to me with problems - the kind of problems i'm supposed to eventually deal with. that seems easy enough except for this silly shoulder injury that's holding me back. went to the doctor on monday evening to get it looked at since it doesn't seem much improved after 2 weeks rest. (my regular doc was out, so i had this wierdo - but that's another boring story.) anyway, he said it was bicep tendonitis & i'm not supposed to use it until it's better & i should do lots of exercises & icing. hoping to get my new insurance & just go to a physical therapist. i'm not goofing around w/ any of that.

other than these things, ,the job seems ok so far. the people are really nice. there's a lot of variety in the work. i don't know how the days are passing so quickly but they are. it seems like i've only been there about 3 hours by the time the end of the day rolls around. so i guess that's a good thing. i just don't feel necessarily accomplished at the end of the day yet. but again, it's only been 3 days. i'll have to give it time. my supervisor will be out of town in 2 weeks & i'm feeling a bit nervous about how that will work out. i'll just have to be patient. i have to say, all the drama w/ the garage door made for a pretty good day. it was a bonding experience w/ one of the AmeriCorps, for me anyway. a'ight. time to try some sleeping again. if anyone really reads this, i'm sorry it's so boring. don't know what else to do when i can't sleep.