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I have successfully rearranged my schedule next week so I have Friday and Saturday off. This is good, because I am moving on Friday and Saturday. (Help! That's not nearly enough time! How am I supposed to sort and pack all my damn stuff in only one week?!?!)
I also picked up two extra hours yesterday, because of...
Um. I had better go back and start this at the beginning. The City of Ithaca has decided, in their infinite wisdom, to repave the 300 block of East State St. This is good; it needs repaving. (Or re-bricking, as the case may be.) They are also planning to widen the street, lay in new sewer pipes, do something to the gas pipe to one of the buildings on that block, and put in a new bus stop right outside the store where I work. They have already chopped down most of the trees and beheaded all the parking meters in preparation.
They start putting up detour signs on Monday the 8th. They break ground on Monday the 15th. The project is scheduled to run through September.
Anyway, the final information/planning meeting was held yesterday morning, at ¡Viva! Tacqueria and Cantina. PM asked me to come in at 9am rather than 11am so BW and I could attend, take notes, and ask questions. That turned out to be a very good idea, because I spotted an issue the City had overlooked.
You see, they are closing State St. This means that trash and recycling pickup will have to be done elsewhere. Most of the businesses on our block use dumpsters in the parking lot behind our building. But the smoke shop (and our neighbors the interior design shop and the knitting store) uses the City's ordinary street pickup service. And if there is no street, there is obviously no trash pickup.
So, I asked the City employee in charge of this project, where and when is our new trash pickup?
For a moment he looked a bit like I'd handed him a dead fish -- I think it's a little embarrassing to get this close to the start of a major project and realize you've overlooked something so basic -- but he recovered nicely and said he'd look into the issue immediately and tell us as soon as they'd worked out an answer.
So that is (hopefully) in progress. And the City and the Downtown Ithaca Alliance are working together on making maps of the detour routes for us to give to delivery drivers, and on giant signboards that will be set up at the edge of the construction zones to assure passersby that there are indeed businesses in there, and we really are open.
All in all, I think we're about as ready as we can be. It's going to be a massive pain, and our poor vacuum cleaner is going to hate us, but theoretically the temperature will soon be high enough that we would have had the doors shut and the AC on anyway (usually this would already be the case, but Ithaca has had an abnormally cool spring this year), so with luck that will limit the incursion of dust. Our display windows will, of course, be filthy, which will drive BW nuts... but that's his problem, not mine. *evil grin*
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In writing news, I have gone back and stuck in some extra stuff toward the beginning of "The Light in Your Eyes," which is a story whose current working summary is 'Grief management for dummies (Spock, this means you).' It's also a ( do I still have to cut for shipping spoilers? ) story, but that's not really the point; at heart, it's gen, though I am sure love (and nonjudgmental understanding) plays an important part in the ongoing healing process.
I also picked up two extra hours yesterday, because of...
Um. I had better go back and start this at the beginning. The City of Ithaca has decided, in their infinite wisdom, to repave the 300 block of East State St. This is good; it needs repaving. (Or re-bricking, as the case may be.) They are also planning to widen the street, lay in new sewer pipes, do something to the gas pipe to one of the buildings on that block, and put in a new bus stop right outside the store where I work. They have already chopped down most of the trees and beheaded all the parking meters in preparation.
They start putting up detour signs on Monday the 8th. They break ground on Monday the 15th. The project is scheduled to run through September.
Anyway, the final information/planning meeting was held yesterday morning, at ¡Viva! Tacqueria and Cantina. PM asked me to come in at 9am rather than 11am so BW and I could attend, take notes, and ask questions. That turned out to be a very good idea, because I spotted an issue the City had overlooked.
You see, they are closing State St. This means that trash and recycling pickup will have to be done elsewhere. Most of the businesses on our block use dumpsters in the parking lot behind our building. But the smoke shop (and our neighbors the interior design shop and the knitting store) uses the City's ordinary street pickup service. And if there is no street, there is obviously no trash pickup.
So, I asked the City employee in charge of this project, where and when is our new trash pickup?
For a moment he looked a bit like I'd handed him a dead fish -- I think it's a little embarrassing to get this close to the start of a major project and realize you've overlooked something so basic -- but he recovered nicely and said he'd look into the issue immediately and tell us as soon as they'd worked out an answer.
So that is (hopefully) in progress. And the City and the Downtown Ithaca Alliance are working together on making maps of the detour routes for us to give to delivery drivers, and on giant signboards that will be set up at the edge of the construction zones to assure passersby that there are indeed businesses in there, and we really are open.
All in all, I think we're about as ready as we can be. It's going to be a massive pain, and our poor vacuum cleaner is going to hate us, but theoretically the temperature will soon be high enough that we would have had the doors shut and the AC on anyway (usually this would already be the case, but Ithaca has had an abnormally cool spring this year), so with luck that will limit the incursion of dust. Our display windows will, of course, be filthy, which will drive BW nuts... but that's his problem, not mine. *evil grin*
---------------
In writing news, I have gone back and stuck in some extra stuff toward the beginning of "The Light in Your Eyes," which is a story whose current working summary is 'Grief management for dummies (Spock, this means you).' It's also a ( do I still have to cut for shipping spoilers? ) story, but that's not really the point; at heart, it's gen, though I am sure love (and nonjudgmental understanding) plays an important part in the ongoing healing process.
