The Order of Operations

Typically on Fridays, I found myself up at the shop, filling in holes & smoothing out the walls, priming & painting.  I had one of my dad's old alarm clock radios & would jam out some classic rock cassettes while getting lost in the white roller's path.  

Sometimes, I'd find myself up there after dark, tuned into the "Saturday Night Fish Fry" & later on, the "Blues Ball" shows on KSDS, San Diego's Jazz 88.3.  Under the dusty chandelier, I'd be whiting out corners & getting lit up on a few cold ones.  

It was fun to have project, something to kill time away from the house, but it was kind of busy work that filled the void of limited farmers market setups.

"That's great you're getting stuff done up there, but isn't painting the last thing you do when you do a buildout?" Kate asked.  

She was right & I knew it.  I mean, we probably needed to add a wall or two first before it was time to paint.

"John keeps emailing us questions about the plans," Kate said.  "We need to focus on that right now.  Like when you did those sketches for the Beaver kitchen.  That's what matters now."

So, I shifted gears to the John's plans for the Health Department.  Those needed to be approved before we could get our architect Chris going on it & before we could get bids for a contractor to start building it.  

Like my junior high math teacher, Mr. Kennedy, used to say, "Remember, the order of operations."  Math is used in the real world a lot more than we realize.

Anyway, John was quick to respond.  It was: "How about this here?  What about that over there?  And, can we move this over here?"  After a several back & forth emails & some small tweaks to his digitally printed sketch, he sent them out to the county health department.

Two weeks later, on September 15, we were approved & ready for Chris to start on the blueprints for the buildout.