Wednesday was my first day back at the office after the traditional holiday break.

I arrived bright and early (well, I was bright, the sky wasn’t, as it was ten to six in the morning). I found that while I was gone, facilities had installed a sink in my building. A kitchen sink, pretty much sitting right out in the open in what we traditionally think of as a hallway.

There’s been talk of repurposing some of the extra space in this building (used mostly for storage) to house some additional folks, which would necessitate some upgrades to the facilities, though we figured they’d stick the sink in the little break room that’s got the microwave, coffee machine, and refrigerator in it.

Apparently not.

Having encountered this change half a dozen steps inside the front door, I made my way to my office to find that the network was down in the entire building. In today’s fancy VOIP world, that means nothing works, no phone, no internet, no intranet…nothing. So I spent an hour on hold with the help desk on my cell phone before talking to a pleasant person who told me that most of the organization was down, and kindly entered a service ticket that I couldn’t see because I couldn’t get into the online service ticket tracker.

Anyway, my computer did turn on, and I was able to look at all the messages left for me since I last logged on back on December 21 (I came in for half an hour that morning while running errands because I didn’t trust that the timekeeping system worked or that my boss approved my time sheet so I’d be paid*). I spent a while working through that, and sending a couple of off-network email messages (using my spare public email) to my team letting me know the situation.

I took this as a sign, and since I didn’t have any meetings scheduled on my calendar (at least as of the last update on 12/21), I’d spend my day knocking out some documentation off-line and setting up my project file folders for the new calendar year. It was a quiet, pleasant morning.

Then the plumber and the electrician came in. Seems the sink wasn’t finished yet; they had to hook up a water heater and tap the water line.

It wasn’t quiet anymore.

The internet eventually came back on after I’d also let the housekeeping folks in and gone off for lunch. I was able to clear the rest of my messages, send off the documents I had queued up, and then it was pretty much time for me to leave.

I hope the rest of my year is less eventful.

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* – I was right, by the way. The time system crapped out and I had to re-submit my time card. Sometimes paranoia is a virtue.