Took a great vacation to Vail, Colorado last week. Rented a pretty nice timeshare condo and went with a couple buddies. The weather was fantastic and we took a couple of side trips to Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy and Glenwood Springs, Colorado to visit the Glenwood Caverns theme park. Glenwood Springs is where the famous Doc Holliday died. It seemed like everything in the town was named after him.
Coming back to work has been an adventure. I always end up working 60 hours or so the week I get back from vacation trying to get all my accounts caught back up. It’s tiring both mentally and physically.
One of the people backing me up when I was gone broke one of my badges, among other things, so I had to get a replacement today. I run the vending on the University side of the KU Medical Center campus and I need a badge to enter a lot of the buildings. The campus is under construction right now so parking is pretty difficult. The badge services office is located in the basement of the hospital, so I had to park where I usually do on the University side and walk a pretty good distance to the basement of the hospital to get a new badge. There was a young girl behind the desk and I explained to her what happened and she took my broken badge and started the process of making me a new one.
It only took about five minutes to get a new badge, but I had to walk all the way back to where my truck was before I tried to get in one of the buildings and realized the badge didn’t work. So I walked all the way back to the hospital and this time when I walked in and explained the badge didn’t work the supervisor came from around the corner and told the nice young girl behind the desk that she messed up. She also notified me that the badge she made for me was for the hospital, not the University side. Also the University side now has their own badge office that I needed to go to. It is located in a building I had never heard of, so I asked for directions. Here’s basically what she told me…
“Go out this door and go right. Go straight down the hall, not to the right. You’ll see a ramp leading to an elevator. Take the elevator to floor “G.” When you get off the elevator, take two lefts and the office is down the hall on your right.”
Alrighty then.
I did find the elevator, but the “G” button on the elevator didn’t work. So I went up and down a couple times before I realized it was a lost cause. I finally got off at the first floor and found a staircase going down. The staircase wasn’t marked, so I pretty much had to guess which floor was “G.” Most of the elevators there have a “B” for basement, a “G” for ground floor and then floors 1, 2, 3, etc. But not all of them are marked that way. Some don’t have a “B” or “G” at all. I ended up wandering around aimlessly for a while until I finally found a sign pointing me to the badge office.
I walked in and explained the situation and the manager there said that she needed permission from my contact at the University to make me another badge. So I called her and she didn’t answer. The manager asked me “Do you know her last name?” “Uh, no. I just know her name is Theresa, but I do have her phone number.” She was able to look up her email address with the phone number and send her an email. Once she finally had permission, she said “go ahead and have a seat. This is going to take a little while.” So I sat down and waited. Then she said “I will need your picture.” So I stood up and stood in front of the camera. She said “it’s ok to smile.” So I smiled and she finally took it. Then she said “it’s going to take a little while for it to laminate, etc. The machine is slow.” Good Lord. I finally got the new badge about an hour or an hour and a half later. Made for a much longer day than it already was. This is the story of #joeslife.
Anyway, here’s hoping your week is better than mine. And here are some pictures from Colorado.
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Joe’s Deli in Vail Village |
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Big boulder on my mountain hike at Vail |
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Took this picture on my hike at Vail |
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Took this picture of our condo on my hike at Vail. I was pretty high up the mountain at this point. |
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Chapel at the Air Force Academy |