DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I knew this would be a bad week way back in June. That’s when I booked a 17-day vacation in Europe and simultaneously learned about a huge development project that was due to launch on August 15. I’m not so cynical that I automatically think every work project will be three-plus weeks late, but in this particular case, I was exactly that cynical.

The problem was that the big development project had a bigger prerequisite… something bigger than we’d ever done. Something that could easily take a couple or three weeks longer to deliver than the projections claimed. Something that could keep me working nights and weekends for a month in a vain attempt to meet what I’ve increasingly come to think of as arbitrary deadlines.

The bigger prerequisite went live last weekend — Labor Day weekend, a three-day holiday for most of the country, but an overtime extravaganza for me and my team. We put in a 19-hour Saturday, a few hours on Sunday, and a full workday on Monday.

Somewhere in the midst of that weekend, I discovered that our water had gone bad: it came out of the faucet cloudy and brown, with little bits of unidentified muck suspended within. A peek into the holding tank confirmed my fears: our well had pumped out 1500 gallons of murk.

Then on Tuesday night, as I sat upstairs briefly decompressing from the day’s stresses, my wife started up her workstation. I wouldn’t have known this, half a house away, except for the terrible screeching sound, audible and soul-scarring even at a distance. I thought she had a songbird in a bench vise. I knew immediately that her computer had lost a disk drive.

Wednesday and Thursday were less hellish, but still I am extremely relieved to be getting the heck out of town.

I plan to write over the next couple of weeks. Travel usually inspires a story or two. Check back soon.