Naina and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Yesterday was a Very Bad Day. It started out with my slamming my fingers in the kitchen cabinet as I was making breakfast and went downhill from there. I learned that several of my co-workers at Discovery had been let go, including the person who originally hired me for my current job. Some of them had been with the company for a long time -- and even though I mostly work from home, I have gotten to know them well enough over the years that I was utterly devastated when I heard the news. I had a hard time concentrating on my work -- as did everyone else I work with, it seemed -- so I went over to the house for an hour to focus on something else.

The crappiness of the day was enhanced by cold, rainy weather, so the stucco guys still hadn't been able to get started. Rob, John, Paul, and Jim were the only people there. John was working on the stairs and wanted to know what kind of newel posts we wanted. He suggested that if we couldn't find pre-made ones that worked, he could just build one for us, and proceeded to sketch out some ideas on the work table.
When he saw me trying to take this photo so I could show Josh, he found a scrap of cardboard and drew a new one for me to take home. I really need to get them a big pad of paper. I also went over some of the details of the back porch with Rob. They are planning to build it with Trex, which is a composite material made from recycled plastic and wood, so we needed to choose a color and decide what kind of railing we wanted.

Meanwhile, Jim was just finishing up all the phone and cable wiring. Here's all the wiring that runs to where my desk will go in the office.
And Paul was framing out the doorway for the new closet in the office. This is where our bathtub used to be! Because the ductwork runs through the wall here, the closet will be a little smaller than we originally thought, so Rob was suggesting we could just have one door instead of two. That seemed like a good idea, especially since we need to budget for an extra door for the linen closet. I asked Rob and Paul to stand in the closet so I could get a better sense of scale in the photo. The were happy to oblige, but initially had their backs to me. I should have just taken that one anyway, but I made them turn around.
Aren't they cute? Rob was joking about potential captions for the photo, so I suggested "Rob and Paul come out of the closet." Rob laughed that I had set them up for that one, and Paul pointed out that he was still (literally) in the closet, and remained there -- working -- until I left.

I had to rush back home to dial in to an all-hands meeting to discuss the latest round of layoffs and restructuring within my group at Discovery -- the presenter was painfully upbeat. I also got an email invitation to an "After-Work Get-Together (previously known as 'Happy' Hour)" at a dive bar in Silver Spring, MD to say goodbye to all the people who had been let go. I hadn't been in the office since January, and I wanted to see all my friends one last time, so I hopped on the Metro and headed up there. I'm really glad I went. I'm still heartbroken over what happened, but it was therapeutic to be able to share that with my co-workers -- and we had some good laughs, too. They are a great group of people, and it's going to be tough to lose some of them.