In which you can hardly tell it’s the weekend.

Today is the first day of our third week in Indy. I feel both as if I just arrived, and as if I’ve been here forEVer.

BoSe and Bread had a nine o’clock this morning. I tried to get the bid done last night, but it’s hard to work in the evening because the boys wanna relax and keep popping in and out so it’s hard to get any questions answered, like, “What the fuck is a D&R wrirmiumumm?” or “Don’t you know how to spell chimney?” or “Is this a 4 or a 9?”

So I had the bid nearly finished except for calculating the siding (damn gable ends, man) when I went to bed. Which means I got up at 7:30 this morning to do math.

Math, people.

Actually, I made Bread do it. But still.

I got the bid finished and printed for the guys and turned in our expenses to Dee all before 8:30 in the morning. BoSe ran for coffee, so now it’s nine and I’m listening to Mozart In The Morning and sipping a hazelnut latte and the door and window are open and the guys have five appointments scheduled for today and I’ll probably be alone much of the day. Unless Truck or PaKa come over to hang out.

I don’t think I have anything in particular to work on, so I guess I’ll troll Xactimate’s built-in Help system (I totally RTFM) to see if it can teach me how to make it calculate siding easily without having to draw the entire goddamned house.

Sunday, of course, is laundry day. I hope to God we manage to actually sleep in tomorrow.

In other news, Bread had one of those disturbing anxiety dreams that make you feel all discombobulated when you wake up. Apparently he dreamed Indiana had weird laws and his mom called to warn him but he got arrested anyway and was in one of those paper suits, handcuffed into a paddy wagon, and kids were asking him for cigarettes. He said he felt all weird all morning.

In which I woke up on the wrong side of the bed entirely.

I woke up totally fucking aggro this morning. Then my computer was acting like a slow piece of shit while I was trying to produce some printed bids. Then the guys were freaked out about this thing and that thing (this gig is incredibly talky — everyone’s always talking, and either freaking out or reassuring each other in turns… I think it’s a sales thing). Then Bread had said last week he would for certain take Bowling Jesus to the airport this morning, but then he changed his mind and left for a scope with BoSe so now I have to drive to the goddamned airport and I don’t want to do it.

I hate it when he flakes like that, especially when he expects me to unfuck it for him. He does it to people all the time, but if someone flakes on him you never hear the end of it.

There are still contract issues between WGC and 2X4, and our ‘team leader’ is maddeningly vague about it. We keep hearing that “everyone’s making ten grand a week here!” but no one admits to it. Who the hell is this nebulous “everyone”? It’s frustrating and maddening and we’re all vascillating from really feeling confident that this was a good idea to feeling convinced we’re being made chumps of. The emotional rollercoaster, while interesting, kinda sucks.

You wouldn’t believe how much talking goes on. We’re all living in the same motel, so every evening everyone comes back from the various corners of the city, changes into shorts, pours a drink, and starts making the rounds. There are guys wandering around for hours, chatting and chatting and chatting and chatting. It’s a huge game of “so-and-so said this, did you hear what what’s-his-face said?” and information and gossip swirl around like oil on a puddle, forming and reforming into different configurations.

I’m the defacto software expert, so people call and drop in all the time looking for help with Xactimate. Rarely do they actually need help using the software; usually they have a policy question but they don’t know enough to know the distinction. I’ve helped people put images into Word documents, I’ve designed and distributed templates for business cards, I re-wrote the 2X4 flyers into 4th grade English, and I’ve helped my team leader on his bids more than once. PaKa is coming over in a few minutes because he doesn’t know how to calculate drip edge or water&ice or something.

I’ve been drinking too much coffee. Grrr.

Update: It’s gotten worse. The talk-talk-talking, the rumours, the crazy girly insanity. This whole scene is driving me nuts. One guy was ousted today; he was attempting to do what I do — support salesmen by doing back-end data entry and officy stuff — but the team leader told the guys who were using his services that they’d be fired if they continued to do so. It’s worse than high school, peeps. If we don’t get that check today I’m gonna go postal. I think it’s time for a drink.