Christmas Eve

It's been a sorta-busy week for me.  Work-wise, things have really slowed down.  To a crawl, actually.  Loads of people are gone for R&R over the holidays, so there isn't a whole heckuva lot to do.  But our big thing was the move.  Our office was one of the last to move from the old Palace over to the New Embassy Compound.  We finally did it yesterday.  

Prep work took a lotta time.  We had to go through all our old files, some of which dated back to the old Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).  Which, in terms of our current situation, is ancient history.  There were files that had to be archived, files (as few as possible) that are still relevant and were to be moved, and the vast majority that feel into the Old Useless Crap category and were to be shredded.

My stuff was pretty easy.  I have almost nothing in the way of paper files since most of it is electronic.  (I have a huge collection of emails, though ... just 'cause ya never know ...)  So my packing took all of five minutes, and that included taping up the box.  And since we've been shredding stuff for weeks, we had very little paper remaining to shred or move.  So I went out to see if I could help anybody else and wound up shredding stuff for the front office.  I was there for four hours and seemed like I barely made a dent in it, even though I filled up seven huge garbage bags with shred.  (And this was for the same office that had been telling us for weeks that we should plan ahead and shred early and often ... yeah, sure).  Yesterday was The Big Move.  Of course, it moved like all other Big things: s-l-o-w-l-y.  Didn't get completed until late last night.

One of the holdups was that all the boxes going into the new building had to be X-rayed.  We had been told "NO ELECTRONICS", meaning no cell phones, calculators, iPods, headphones, or anything else of that nature.  So what did they find once they started x-raying?  Cell phones, calculators, iPods, headphones, and all sorts of other things of that nature.  Yeah, buddy, we sure know how to follow directions!  But then the security guys went overboard.  Now, I can understand the bit about electronics: anytime you have chips and so forth, you have the potential for security compromises.  But they were confiscating batteries and Christmas lights, too.  What, I ask you, kind of security threat is posed by a Duracell coppertop AA battery?  

But we're in our new digs.  Quite a change from the old place.  There, we were scattered in rooms all over the Palace.  Two or three here, maybe four over there, and way down the hall were a few more.  Now we're all in one big room.  We don't even have proper cubicles.  We have "cubicles lite": basically a small desk with a computer, some drawers, and waist-high dividers just around the desk only.  The building is regular office-modern, meaning it has no soul whatsoever.  Bland is an understatement.  One thing you could say for the old Palace: it had plenty of character.  Most of it was really cheesy character, but it jumped into "cheesy" in the biggest way possible, so there was always something interesting to look at.  Even if it was just to say "good Lord, what were they thinking??"

But now it's Christmas eve.  It's a day off for us.  Not that there's a whole helluva lot to do.  But it's a nice day, temperatures in the upper 60's, clearing (it's been pretty gloomy the past few days), and it's nice to have a chance to just walk around with nothing much to do.  I went for a jog earlier and that might be the highlight of the day.  That, and getting out all my email Christmas cards.

So have yourself a very merry Christmas!  I'm looking forward to another day of doing nothing tomorrow!