Hell Week

We're headed into high paranoia mode at work this week, with a management self-assessment coming up starting on Nov. 8 in preparation of opening a new Cat 2 nuclear facility later in the month. We see only the paperwork end of things, but that's enough to throw just about everyone into a frenzy, because it's the paperwork that's one of the three pillars of our preparation pyramid.

(Manager's Elbow, by the way, doesn't apply where I work, fortunately. Credit is spread just about as equally as the blame, so I've got no complaints.)

I've got my fingers in about a half dozen bits of paper that have to be finished this week. Fortunately, five of the six are relatively simple, but it's that sixth one that's likely going to be the troublemaker this week. But that too shall pass. It's got to. And with deadlines looming, the skids that need to be greased will be greased well. I'm just glad that we had a flood of approvals go through last week so the majority of our stuff is done. So pretty much during the next few weeks we'll be playing catch-up with the stuff that's had to go on the back-burner, and then making any necessary changes that come up just before and then during the assessment. The good news is last year when we did this, the assessment results were pretty perfunctory, without major calamities happening. I can only hope that'll be the case this time around.