A day in the working life

People seemed to like last Saturday's Day in the life post, so here is the promised working-day chronicle.

6:20 awake but still tired, I roll over and sleep on.

8:15 awake for the second time, I roll the other way (clockwise) and get up. Put on yesterday's t-shirt and Greenpeace shorts. Commando. Breakfast of Kellogg's "Toppas;" read an article on the Shakers in the February 13th "New Yorker."

8:50 finish the article. Load up the washing machine with shirts, underwear and Tilley pants.

9:00 put on the coffee and read e-mail: 41 spam, 2 database questions. Delete the former, answer the first of the latter; the second is a little more challenging than the usual run of questions, so I phone the customer for clarification. We spend nearly half an hour discussing exactly what she wishes to do, and in the end find a better alternative workflow. A good result.

9:45 resume work on the data import which I started on Sunday but didn't finish (I did the preparatory data-manipulation part, then went to bed).

10:15 interrupt the database work to hang up the wash to dry, and start a second load (sheets and pillowcases).

11:28 the doorbell rings! My neighbour has come to collect the parcel which UPS left with me on Thursday morning. I have somehow become the "block mother" for this building: whenever a delivery has to be left for someone who's not here, the courier rings my bell.

12:02 hang up the laundry to dry. Check for e-mail: 15 spam. Deleted.

12:08 overcome by an urge to blog, I write a brief and dull post.

12:10 posted. Back to work, putting the finishing touches on the data import. Think that it's gone quite smoothly, considering.

12:21 checking the data prior to exporting it, just to be sure that all is well. Hmmmm. Funny, that shouldn't be there. Or there. Or there either. My God, it's everywhere. Oh fuck. Disaster. I have written data into the wrong field in a moment of inattention, and lost data from 1556 records. Damn and blast. When did I last make a copy of the import database? 10:14 oh dear God it's gone. Shit shit shitty shit.

I take a clean copy of the empty database and start the import again.

12:45 the doorbell rings! A new courier, someone I've never seen before, wants to leave a package for a neighbour. Sure, why not.

13:00 the data has been imported again (it's always very much faster to do something for the second time, the thinking has been done). I check the data prior to exporting it, all is indeed well. I send the export data to the customer as an e-mail attachment.

13:02 send the computers to sleep and myself to the shower.

13:16 dress for the second time, in a cool greenish-grey t-shirt and my stonegrey Tilley pants, with underwear. Call G to arrange lunch (we usually eat together); they have already eaten but couldn't be bothered to tell me. Fine. Decide to go to the local Italian Stehcafe where we usually eat. Put on socks and shoes, pocket my telefonino and clip on my iPod. Wake up Alberich briefly to check the weather forecast, on its advice I take an umbrella.

13:18 leave the house. Halfway out the door, I remember that I have yet again left the wet towel lying on my bed, and return to hang it up.

13:25 arrive at Scardanelli, receive the usual effusive greeting from Marco - clearly a man who loves his job. The daily special is already finished, I order Oricetti in a tomato-ricotta-rucola sauce. Very tasty.

14:30 arrive at the office. First task is to finish the changes to a reflected ceiling plan which we discussed on Monday evening. Print this, discuss again, print again. We declare victory, G keeps the drawings to send on for comment.

15:30 start work on another unfinished item from Monday, the outside staircase down to the HVAC areas. This had to be demolished as part of the renovation, leaving an enormous gap between old & new; we want to reduce the size of the stair opening as much as possible. Draw two sections (along and across), comparing to photos of the existing staircase and the hole as it currently exists; realize that we don't have reliable height information for the parapet wall around the existing hole, or the floor slab (below grass) that this connects to. Write a fax to the building superintendant asking him to measure this up.

16:05 interrupted to whip up a quick comparison sketch showing "before and after" of a set of columns that we wanted moved, while G and U are on the telephone with the structural engineer. Print it, they discuss it with him but cannot reach a conclusion. I make PDFs of the sketches and mail them to him, then resume work on the staircase.

17:00 print the new staircase sections together with an elevation which I prepared yesterday. G and U and myself discuss this for nearly an hour, after which G is sick of the thing. It is again put aside for another day.

18:00 start work on another unfinished item from several weeks ago, a new service pit where the electric cables enter the buildings. We know very little of this, other than a rough position and that it needs a clear internal height of 1.20 metres. The task is made more complex by the foundations in this area, which rest on huge pilings. I suggest deepening the foundation even further, to spare us having to work around the pilings.

18:30 print the section. G and U and myself discuss this for half an hour, after which G is sick of it too. It is again put aside for another day.

19:05 finished. I write out my timesheet and backup my files onto the server volume for safekeeping. I turn on my telefonino and reattach my iPod - and out the door I went © George Thorogood.

19:12 arrive at a local food store halfway between the office and my apartment. Buy dinner for tomorrow (I shall not be working, because G is out of the office) and cookies. On impulse throw in a bag of potato chips, I feel the need for some salt. Must be losing electrolytes from so much sweating.

19:28 home. Put away the groceries, change back into Greenpeace shorts and no socks. Wash the day's sweat and grit off my upper body.

19:33 check e-mail: 2 blog comments, 35 spam, 3 non-spam ads (i.e. for products or services that I actually use). Delete the spam, write a comment in reply.

19:50 start to make dinner, a quick'n'easy salad: packaged pre-cut and washed greenery, half an avocado, grated cheese, mayonnaise, salt and pepper to taste. Find a smoked trout filet in the fridge, add that to the mix. Sit down with Cormac McCarthy's "Suttree" to eat.

20:10 the doorbell rings! It is a new neighbour, a woman I've never seen before. She collects her parcel and leaves.

20:36 finished dinner and reached the end of a chapter. Wash dishes and clean up the kitchen.

20:46 make a cup of tea, sit down to read blogs and the online news. Put on the new Zauberflöte to hear while reading.

21:28 a chorus of animalistic noises through the open windows announces the first goal in the evening soccer game. Spain 1, France 0. Good.

22:19 the Queen of the Night's second aria is a real show-stopper, it interrupts my reading. What caught my attention is this aria's similarity to her first aria back at the beginning of the opera. I must listen intently to both of them, to see whether they really are similar or whether my memory has conflated them. [Updated: not at all similar, I was having a déja vu moment.]

22:43 finished blogreading. I make a second cup of tea, and start to write this post.

23:18 the Zauberflöte comes to an end. I put on Liszt's Études Transcendente, played by Georges Cziffra. This performance is vaguely unsatisfying: I find his playing too willfully dramatic, he underplays (ha) the sometimes quite tender emotionality of the pieces in favour of "look how fast I can play" posturing. Must find another, better recording.

00:00 how appropriate! I type the words "I type the words." Look back, edit, expand, perhaps even prune away.

00:21 I declare victory, refrain from swigging down the rest of my now stone-cold tea, and go to brush my teeth. I walk around the flat while brushing my teeth: looking out the front window, turning off lights, sending the computers to sleep.

00:25 posted. And so to bed, where I shall read (Boethius, "The consolations of philosophy" still) for half an hour or so.