Today At Work

I had today off (part of my 5-day Weekend of Wonderment), but I went in anyway, to try to untangle some of my desk, which lately has been a sort of minefield in that every time I try to find anything, I come across a bunch of crap I should already have handled. Between my natural laziness and time-killing attitude at work, the large number of people who can ask me for things, and my boss's propensity for interrupting me all day, it's been hard for me to catch up on any of this at work. (80% of this is completely my fault; only 20% can fairly be attributed to my work environment.)

Anyway, today I sent out some important certified mail things (which I got Mosch to assemble for me) that I was kind of letting people think I had already done a while back. That kind of thing is good to do when nobody is around. Not that I would know.

I also went through some initial surface damage payments we had made (these are payments we make in advance to surface owners before we drill wells) and deciphered the annual payments that will be due, and added these payments to the rental calendar. That took literally hours.

Then I finished some map updates I had been working on before the break. That was the fun part of my day.

Near the end, I went through most of the stuff on my desk and cleaned it up. A lot of the stuff that ends up on my desk can simply be thrown away immediately (recycled, of course) - it's things like drafts of maps and documents I was working on. But there was a bunch of other stuff, so I came up with a New Organizational Scheme, which should make my boss happy to see, though doubtless I won't keep it up in the future.

Basically, I found some legal-size foldery things and, everything I found that wasn't to be thrown away, I decided what hypothetical category it might go in (e.g., "Original Documents", "Arkansas Miscellaneous", "Regulatory Notes", "Current Assignments"), put a label on a folder, and stuck the stuff in there. I ended up with about 15 of these folders. It looks all neat and organized. I even used my nifty little label machine (which is hooked up to the computer and thus is actually easier than hand-writing anything) to make neat little labels.

What with processing the surface payments, doing the certified mail stuff, and sorting through my desk, I was able to foist a ton of filing tasks off on our wonderful receptionist (who was a file clerk in her previous life at our old company), which is great.

I left work at about 8 PM (after arriving around 1:30) and was very satisfied with my day.