CEI is now in its new offices, still in Bentonville, not really that far from our old office. The moving company did some pre-moving on Wednesday and Thursday, to avoid being overloaded on Friday and have to go into an overtime situation. They took all of the library (which I had ready on Monday) and most of my office stuff on those two days. On Thursday and Friday morning I set up the library in its new place–135 boxes, give or take a box. My fingers were raw, my wrists hurt, and I was tired.
Still, on Friday I actually felt pretty good. I went back to the old office to assist in any way I could. I found and broke down utility shelves and moved them to the elevator, where the loading crews took them upstairs to the large storage space we are keeping in the old building. I gathered up old network cables for salvage or discard. I helped the movers load a large bookcase onto my pick-up, for delivery to my near neighbor (who also works here, and who had bought the bookcase). I went to the IT room and helped them break down racks of servers, unplug a whole bunch of connecting cables and sorted them by length and bundled them.
We had lunch at the old building, courtesy of CEI, which was very good. I set up the tables and chairs in the break room. I also suggested to the chairman of the board that we have an informal ceremony for striking the colors. The US and Arkansas flags are tattered and need to be replaced. No reason to leave them for the tenants. He liked the idea, so at the end of lunch we all went to the front of the building, to the flagpole. Without any veterans present (except the chairman and one board member), a couple of boy scout leaders handled the ceremony. The chairman and the CEO made brief remarks. I don’t know that I would call it a “moving” ceremony, but I’m glad I suggested it.
In short, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades on Friday. Got to the new office about 4 PM and worked till 6 PM on my own office set-up, and was far along with it at the end. Oh, and in the morning I received a call on my cell phone (our office phones being down, along with e-mail, Internet, etc.) from a client, assigning us a new project, one we will do jointly with the company I broke into this business with, Black & Veatch. It’s a relatively small share for us, but it’s still a project. That was a fitting event on a day we moved to quarters about 35 % of the size we had.
During these last five days I have not been able to think about much besides the move. So I’m behind on posts to this blog, such as end of the month report and new month goals. Haven’t written anything in over a week either. Hopefully today I begin getting back to normal.
