random thoughts – Day 1,623 – (Tuesday) – fog, photos, headache

It was a slightly more aggravating ride to work than usual, but not quite as bad as I feared. It was the first day of school for Lowell K-12, and the traffic volume was heavier with school buses and parents driving their offspring downtown to the high school and commuters blocking intersections because that seems to be the way of land lately. It took three light cycles to turn off VFW onto Bridge Street even though I was the fifth vehicle, and then another few minutes to sit on the bridge not moving.

Foggy view from the bridge
over the Merrimack.

At least on the bridge, the view is more interesting than the backsides of a bunch of vehicles. To the right, the converted mill buildings and the greenery along the Merrimack River disappeared into the morning fog. To the left, fog floated around the smokestacks of more mill buildings. I don’t mind traffic as much when there are interesting sights to be seen.

Inside the office, our professional photographer brought in for the day was setting up gear. It was month-long ordeal on my end to set up today’s photo shoot, because it’s usually about as easy as nailing Jell-O to the wall, but vacations and delays reaching people made it even harder.

In the morning session, 13 bankers were photographed. After a break and some lunch and my feeble attempt to plow through emails and the project list, 10 more individual shoots plus team photos in a conference room on another floor the building were accomplished. It all went smoothly, except for the work I kept screwing up at my desk in the eight minute increments available in between greeting new arrivals and explaining the next step to the people who were heading back out. After wondering why I hadn’t heard from a print shop with a quote request, it was discovered the email I swore was sent on Friday was sitting in the “drafts” folder and hadn’t been sent. That was par for the course of the attempted work for the day.

In a couple days, regular work will be cast aside again as I forward photo galleries to all the photo subjects so they can select their poses and log the choices and send them to the photographer. If the averages hold, I’ll have to chase half of them for their selections so the photographer can retouch and send the final files which will then need to be saved on our server. If the averages hold, at least one will never send any choices and I'll say screw it and stop chasing them because I'm not a babysitter. 

Cobblestone road work.

While we had photo lights flashing and photos happening, outside on Shattuck Street, a yellow digger scooper machine thing picked up cobblestones and set them into a big dump truck. It was loud busy outside, and slightly less loud and a different kind of busy inside and my head was pounding most of the day with the new flavor of headache over the past week where my face and eyeballs also hurt.

According to the memo we received last week, the road project will run about eight weeks. According to the magic of a Google search, the road project is “for cobblestone restoration as part of a gas main restoration program.” As much as I love Internet searches for quick answers and deep dives, I haven’t Googled the recent headache situation because that just feels like planting seeds for a potential flirtation with hypochondria.