Not Much Time for Nothing

I had great plans to write some blog posts last week and over the weekend. Life got in the way, however. This second flood study has become an all-consuming monster as I try to make an extended deadline—extended through the goodness of the reviewer for FEMA’s consultant. I even went in to work about four hours on Sunday. Today, finally, the three drawings are done, my computer models are correct, the request to burn CDs has been turned in. And the original of the computer models and my engineering mini-report are on my desk, ready for making hard copies tomorrow. All that remains is a title sheet and dividers between the sections. Well, I still haven’t seen the drawings off the plotter. I still have to put my seal and signature on them, and write a certification, but those are minor. I’d say it’s a guarantee I’d have it out the door tomorrow except…

…I’ve been called on to go to Eureka Springs (an hour east of our office) tomorrow, to chase a new drainage project. That will consume my day from 8:30 AM to about 2:00 PM—prime time for copying, assembling, and packaging submittals. We have an admin assistant who can do most of that, but it’s nice to be available for the unexpected glitch.

I find these flood studies to be all consuming as far as brain power is concerned. I get home at night drained, and don’t feel much like writing. What time I do have has gone to study for the Life Group lesson series I’m teaching. Perhaps I can cobble up a post on that this week.

After this flood study goes out the door, I have two other things I have to jump on real quickly, get them knocked out, then go to the third flood study. This one will be from scratch, I think. I won’t have to struggle over whether to fix other people’s mistakes or just let them ride. Won’t have to second guess how another engineer built the model or drew the map. That, at least, will be a nice change.

So when will I get back to writing? Don’t know. The situation at Suite101 is not good. Something has happened to the web site business model. Page views and revenue has tanked. I’m not writing hardly anything there any more, though that’s partly because of the time and brain drain thing. I’ll try to keep posting here, but I see lots of difficulty ahead.