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Tag Archives: office

Paying Attention. Is It Worth The Money?

Yeah, it really is! No doors or doorknobs were injured in the making of this blog.

This is how it should look!

We have some sensitive materials here at the office, as one would expect. Not money or anything like that, but other things that need to stay private. Now that we will soon be having more people coming in, we need to protect the sensitive information.

Our solution is that every few weeks lately, Lee has been buying a couple of the keypad doorknobs for the outside doors and office doors. So far we have three done. We need a few more. The most sensitive areas have them.

I Know What I’m Doing. Honest.

I like how this picture seems to not show just how messy it is!

Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve dealt with the removal, installation, and repairs of many doorknobs and deadbolts in my time. That being the case, I told Lee and Sue Ann I would gladly install these new doorknobs at the office. I’m here anyway, and it will save the company a few bucks. I installed the one for the back door some weeks ago, and Lee bought two more. One is for Kathleen’s office and one for my office.

The one for my office is mostly so that someone doesn’t stumble in and hurt themselves. I’ll include a picture, and believe it or not, I know where everything is! Unless Lee asks me where it is. When that happens my mind usually goes blank.

Anyway, I have always thought it a good idea to just glance over the instructions again, even if I have done a thing multiple times. Just in case. I try to always do that. I did that this time before I installed Kathleen’s new lock. I told myself, “Mandi,” and I knew it was me talking, because I recognized my voice, “Don’t forget to turn the knobs around on your lock. Your doorknob is on the opposite side from the back door and Kathleen’s door.”

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What’s it Like to Move Your Office and House at the Same Time?

We had a request for a better picture of the bathroom vanity lights. I love these! Very reasonable price at Lowes.

Answer:

It’s not a lot of fun.

We are incredibly excited to get moved to the church and rent the current office out (to tenants moving to Cameron, who will be a real asset to the community – more on that in another post). We are also very excited for my family to get moved to Rattlesnake and rent out the Travis house I am currently renting.

That doesn’t mean that we are excited for the physical moving part of it, though. We are partially packed up, so it makes finding things in the office a little more difficult. Plus it is very bare in my office with the shelves cleaned off, and the furniture all gone except two chairs, my desk, the futon, and a small table.

Empty office shelves. It looks a little sad. Not for much longer, though.

Rattlesnake Blues

My house is pretty well packed up. It needs a good, deep cleaning and some repairs before a new family moves in. We can’t do them until we are gone, though.

It’s really hard to live out of boxes. We’ve been all geared up to move, and things just keep happening that gets it postponed. It is exhausting and it is frustrating to be living like that for the last couple of months that have passed since we were told “two weeks” the first time.

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Herding Cats! What Will Happen to Shadow and Patsy When We Move?

Did anyone consult ME on all this? – Joe

Sue Ann and I have talked at length about where our office kitties should go, since we have decided to move offices. Neither of us can stand the thought of not having them around, but we have to make a decision in their best interest.

The move across town to the church may not suit them. We can’t keep them inside there because Lee is so allergic to cats. We can’t just leave them here to fend for themselves. We don’t do the abandonment thing. AT ALL!

They are outside cats, but will try and slip in on occasion. Even though they want to explore the office a bit, they prefer it outdoors really. There is just way more stuff to do. When it froze after Christmas, Shadow stayed in one of the bedrooms at my house. She was separated from my dogs, and had her own spot, but she was not happy being stuck inside. She ended up only staying in for about two hours and I had to let her out. She was going nuts in there.

We just don’t believe that either of them will be happy to stay inside all of the time, so they have to be able to go outside at least sometimes. We also talked about how hard it is hard to move an outside cat to a new outside place. The best way to do that usually is to keep them in the new house for a little while until they settle in and know where they are being fed for certain. As mentioned above, we can’t do that without Lee getting really sick.

Who could take care of our baby kitties the way we do? Sue Ann and I love them both tremendously, and we want to still be able to have them around and see them. Cats have not had very good luck at the Ranch and Sue Ann worries about their survival out there. And though Sue Ann’s sister lives next door to the office, we didn’t want to burden her with any more cats to deal with, since she already has a lot of vet bills. What are we to do?
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Old House, or Traditional Office Building?

The building where Sue Ann works in Austin has a nice courtyard, but it’s still a corporate office. Click to see her actual window. Luckily she has a window.

Yesterday our city had a major water line break which caused an outage of water to the entire city, except those few who have wells in city limits (Thanks Dad!). I think that the water was restored sometime yesterday evening between 6 and 8. So here I am this morning at the office bleeding the water lines, and watering our green friends who are not very pleased that they missed the regular Wednesday shower. If you have read any of my blogs about our office, you know my opinion is that it is the most perfect office that ever officed. I did start to think though about what would kinds of  buildings are appropriate for what types of offices. This could go into a whole year long blog series, I am sure, but for now, I want to look at 2 of them. Old house offices as opposed to a building devoted for offices. Both of which I have experience with, so while this is an opinion, it is a more educated opinion.

Office Buildings as Offices

Let’s begin with buildings that are built with the sole purpose of being for offices. Companies that have several employees greatly benefit from having the space to accommodate more people. These usually consist of some actual closed-in offices, and open spaces for cubicles. You can fit more people into a workspace this way. Think about it like this. If you own a chain of stores and you have a main corporate office, which of these buildings make money? The corporate office is necessary for accounting, human resources, media, marketing, and those types of things, but the products you sell and make money on are at the stores. The stores are where your money is made. That is where you spend the money. You spend the money on those to make them bigger, cleaner, brighter, hold more equipment, and all of these wonderful things that we shoppers expect.

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Tenants Who Don’t Pay Rent (But they eat the bugs!)

My son asked if they were buzzards. I answered that they are just bald yet.

When I arrived at work on Thursday and opened the door to let the day begin, my son brought to my attention that we had tiny baby birds in the nest on the front porch. I think I squealed with delight for about 10 minutes, made my oldest climb a chair and take pictures, then squealed for another 10 minutes when they heard the click of the camera and hung their heads over the nest. What a really sweet way to start the day! I will knock a wasp nest down quick, but I always leave bird nests even if I think nothing is in it.

Hard to see, but if you click on the picture, you can see his little back and tail.

Our back yard is alive with birds and squirrels. I caught this little guy at left inspecting an older feeder outside, and he stared into the kitchen for the longest time until I snapped the picture and he turned his head at the last second.

It is so neat to work here! We have our green POTTED babies, and we have our birds and our squirrels who are around to visit us. I can hear traffic, but I also hear the chirping of birds, the wind chimes, and the wind blowing when it gets high. Rainy days are actually cool here, because I can see it out of the window and watch the little critters all take cover from it, plus I get to watch our green babies thrive in it.

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