Up on the Roof

Did I mention that I moved into my office? (Why yes, you've mentioned that several times now.) How about pluses and minuses to my new office? Have I mentioned those? No? Okay, here we go.


Pluses:

1. I have a real office with a window and a door (have I mentioned that?)
2. I have a real office with a kitchen in it, and I no longer have to wash my dishes in the bathroom (which, eww, don't even get me started).
3. I have a view of both the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, depending on which window I look out.
4. I have a really, really comfy desk chair.
5. My new office is a balmy 78 degrees. My old office literally had a temperature of 54 degrees in the summertime--something to do with an experimental cooling system gone wrong. I used to have to go in the bathroom (when I wasn't washing my dishes) to run my hands under warm water so they'd thaw out--and I'm about the most hot-natured person you'll ever meet.
6. I no longer have to share a public bathroom with people who were, apparently, raised in a barn.

And now for the minuses:

1. I'm on the roof of the building--if there's a severe thunderstorm, I'm so outta there.
2. Being as how I'm on the roof of the building, there's a pretty bad leak in the ceiling.
3. Being as how I'm on the roof of the building and there's a pretty bad leak in the ceiling, there's an alarm in the kitchen that keeps going off, multiple times a day. I don't know--I guess because it keeps getting wet?
4. None of the maintenance people have figured out yet that there's an actual person working on the 25th floor. They keep coming up into the office suite and turning all of the lights out, while I'm up there.
5. There's a really creepy, creaky little elevator I have to take to get to my office, after getting off of the elevator that goes up the first 24 floors.
6. There are now six more floors to cover in the elevator (seven if you count the second elevator), which means six more floors of idle chit chat with people I don't really care to chit chat with.
7. I've worked in that building for five years and have always had a box of cereal under my desk (the boxes have varied--I haven't hung on to one box for five years). I've been in my new office for exactly one week, and this morning, when I went into work, there were about 2,000 ants in my office--overnight, they established a fully-functional colony, complete with a teeny-tiny superhighway of hundreds of ants transporting hundreds of teeny-tiny cereal bits all the way from under my desk to the door.
8. I now have about 2,000 dead ants in my office, after calling the pest control people. And the facilities services people were real quick to point out that they can't make any promises as to when, exactly, they might be able to make it up there to vacuum up the dead ants.
9. I no longer have any cereal to eat for breakfast.
10. There's no fire alarm up here (promises, promises from building management). I've been advised to keep reminding people on the lower floors to make sure and give me a call if we're asked to evacuate the building for oh, say, a fire.

So, I guess all in all, the pluses are in the lead at this point. Stay tuned for prime hurricane season up on the roof, when I may be told to schlep my computer and all of my files down to an area in the building that's considered a little safer if high winds head our way.