Routine, Sort Of
Routine breeds stability, I suppose.
Life, at least my life, has returned to some semblance of routine.
I got up around 7 a.m. today, as usual. Got the kids moving while the wife slept. Turned on the Disney channel. Fixed the kids some waffles. Ate cereal. Read the newspaper. Took care of the leftover dishes. Showered. Got my 3-year-old son, Curt, dressed. Took him to school. Engaged in the usual tactics to get him from Point A (car) to Point B (classroom). He insists on opening the door. Thirty-plus pounds of determined fury vs. a door a fifth-grader has trouble opening. He makes everyone down there laugh. He makes me laugh, too.
Drove to work. Parked in the usual spot. Got coffee. Tried to settle in at my temporary desk, where I've been since two or three days after Hurricane Rita struck Sept. 23-24.
Wait! Where is my hard drive? I've been moved! *%$#$#@!!!
So much for the comfy business-office confines, where some of us have coexisted for more than a week with the calculator-punching, stamp-slamming ladies of The Mezzanine. A nearby stamp slammer had a pretty good rhythm going the other day, so I accompanied her by singing "Purple Haze." We're a salty bunch, and they found us interesting and amusing, but I suppose it's time they got their desks back. Half of them have been here all week; the other half is expected back Monday. Our swift and decisive eviction, courtesy of our computer staff, apparently began early this morning.
I'm not too crazy about where they're sticking me. I'll be stacked alongside others like a chip in a sideways Pringles can, working elbow-to-elbow in a little room, a space that has gone largely unused in the past. I'll be out in the open. Exposed. They'll hear me talking on the telephone. They'll see my favorite Internet sites and e-mails. They'll see me blogging and wonder if I'm writing about them.
They're nosy by nature, but that's why we hire them.
Our third-floor newsroom will take weeks, perhaps months, to repair. It remains a bizarre landscape of plastic sheeting, shiny aluminum tubing, Sheetrock dust and sawed-off walls.
Our staff is scattered all over the building. News pockets. Editor Tim Kelly and a handful of others are in offices on the second floor. The copy desk is on the other end of the floor, working in what used to be composing before technology made it obsolete. A few reporters will be working in an unused room on The Mezzanine, this strange low-ceiling level between Floors 1 and 2. The photo staff is working out of a side room in the personnel office. Other reporters and editors are set up in the grand conference room. Business Editor Dan Wallach has it good. He's holed up in this bland, lonely little office in circulation. I'd almost kill for that office right now.
Despite the fractured nature of the news operation, we're returning to routine. Work schedules have been re-established. Reporters are back to playing an aggravating game of chicken with deadlines. Non-Rita news is climbing back onto Page 1A. I'm getting home in time to wrestle with my boys, eat dinner with my wife and watch our favorite mindless television shows. She made a killer chicken parmigiana last night, and I'm confident I'll soon gain back the 10 pounds I lost while slogging around during the powerless post-storm swampy days.
Sure, life is getting back to routine, at least what passed for routine before Rita.
So why can't I shake this sense that something is missing?
Life, at least my life, has returned to some semblance of routine.
I got up around 7 a.m. today, as usual. Got the kids moving while the wife slept. Turned on the Disney channel. Fixed the kids some waffles. Ate cereal. Read the newspaper. Took care of the leftover dishes. Showered. Got my 3-year-old son, Curt, dressed. Took him to school. Engaged in the usual tactics to get him from Point A (car) to Point B (classroom). He insists on opening the door. Thirty-plus pounds of determined fury vs. a door a fifth-grader has trouble opening. He makes everyone down there laugh. He makes me laugh, too.
Drove to work. Parked in the usual spot. Got coffee. Tried to settle in at my temporary desk, where I've been since two or three days after Hurricane Rita struck Sept. 23-24.
Wait! Where is my hard drive? I've been moved! *%$#$#@!!!
So much for the comfy business-office confines, where some of us have coexisted for more than a week with the calculator-punching, stamp-slamming ladies of The Mezzanine. A nearby stamp slammer had a pretty good rhythm going the other day, so I accompanied her by singing "Purple Haze." We're a salty bunch, and they found us interesting and amusing, but I suppose it's time they got their desks back. Half of them have been here all week; the other half is expected back Monday. Our swift and decisive eviction, courtesy of our computer staff, apparently began early this morning.
I'm not too crazy about where they're sticking me. I'll be stacked alongside others like a chip in a sideways Pringles can, working elbow-to-elbow in a little room, a space that has gone largely unused in the past. I'll be out in the open. Exposed. They'll hear me talking on the telephone. They'll see my favorite Internet sites and e-mails. They'll see me blogging and wonder if I'm writing about them.
They're nosy by nature, but that's why we hire them.
Our third-floor newsroom will take weeks, perhaps months, to repair. It remains a bizarre landscape of plastic sheeting, shiny aluminum tubing, Sheetrock dust and sawed-off walls.
Our staff is scattered all over the building. News pockets. Editor Tim Kelly and a handful of others are in offices on the second floor. The copy desk is on the other end of the floor, working in what used to be composing before technology made it obsolete. A few reporters will be working in an unused room on The Mezzanine, this strange low-ceiling level between Floors 1 and 2. The photo staff is working out of a side room in the personnel office. Other reporters and editors are set up in the grand conference room. Business Editor Dan Wallach has it good. He's holed up in this bland, lonely little office in circulation. I'd almost kill for that office right now.
Despite the fractured nature of the news operation, we're returning to routine. Work schedules have been re-established. Reporters are back to playing an aggravating game of chicken with deadlines. Non-Rita news is climbing back onto Page 1A. I'm getting home in time to wrestle with my boys, eat dinner with my wife and watch our favorite mindless television shows. She made a killer chicken parmigiana last night, and I'm confident I'll soon gain back the 10 pounds I lost while slogging around during the powerless post-storm swampy days.
Sure, life is getting back to routine, at least what passed for routine before Rita.
So why can't I shake this sense that something is missing?
posted by Brian Pearson at 8:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home