Week 2 Summary: Progress?

This has been an altogether exhausting week. Working so many hours has just been unreal so I already requested off for pretty much all of next week except for Monday night at the restaurant so with the end of this week I'm really looking forward to the next. Hopefully I'll have time to like, eat and sleep.

With everything at ISP I really feel like I'm making progress. It has been fascinating to really analyze all the different checks and balances required to deem something as "green" or not. It is such a broad label that in a lot of ways I feel like it has lost some of its meaning. So many products out there advertise to being "green" but if it has to travel half way around the world to get to you are you really making any progress?

I am perpetually shocked by the incredible number of descisions that homeowners who are remodeling or even starting from scratch have to make. Every detail counts and I mean that in ever sense of those words. It's incredible the amount of thought that has to be put into every aspect of a well designed house. Then, it becomes a matter of working with the actual construction team to make all of the nit picky design elements come true. Like, when it comes to replacing a floor, a lot of times some of the advertised "green" adhesives don't work very well or since it is an a-typical material, your average contracter won't even really know what to do with it. There is do much subtlety involved in design and making a building or room come together as it should. Until now, I never realized the true scope of all the choices that have to be made.

Product Research

My main focus today was my spreadsheet. The library has sort of been put on hold until P and R have time to go through the materials so I spent pretty much all of today on the computer researching which I thought was going to be a little dull but turned out to be really intersting. Besides that though, my day was broken up my little errands and trips to like the post office or out to grab some coffee.

My unofficial goal was to get the solid surfaces page of my spread sheet under control (I'm still dreading the Flooring spreadsheet) which has gone pretty smoothly. To sort of keep myself focused what I like to do it center on one material for like, 15 minutes, and find as much information on that one product as I can but when the time limit is up I have to stop and move one or explore something tangential to the product. For example, I spent a lot of time looking up a product called IceStone which is actually certified by Bill McDonough and the "Cradle to Cradle" certification which was kind of cool. So, I spent some time looking at this list of companies certified under the "Cradle to Cradle" label to see if there were any materials that I recognized or could possible add to my spread sheet.

So, I don't know, it seems a little dull but I actually really enjoyed myself today. I just wish I wasn't so tired. May is our buisiest month at the restaurant so I've had to work every day after I get done at ISP. I mainly just miss eating meals with my family expecially because "family meal" at the restaurant is really terrible. Working so many hours is really starting to catch up with me.

Customers!

Today I got to talk to real live customers and a lot of the facts that I've been picking up through the spread sheets really came in handy. The family that I spoke with today just got back from living in Japan (coincidence, huh?) and are redo-ing their kitchen with the help of the architecture firm.

Side-note >> a lot of the clients come directly over from the architecture firm which is a really easy transition to make

Anyways, it was really fun to talk to them. It was more of an idea session than any sort of sale taking place but it was interesting to work through some of the pro's and con's of different flooring materials or countertops.

I know this may seem random, but as I was talking to this couple and learning more about them I realized that they are in the exact same point in life that my parents were back when they remodeled our kitchen. It was sort of like deja vu because their kids were even the same age as my sister and I when my parents did our kitchen.

My days are sort of falling into a pattern becaues today again was mainly library maitenance and spreadsheets.

Oh - I completely switched around my spreadsheets so now they make a ton more sense. I condesed them all into one excel document and turned them into a Green buyers guide.

Heavy Lifting 2

Library maitenance continued...

I'm actually starting to like the library downstairs now. I spent part of the day dealing specifically with the library and the rest of the time getting together a product list in excel.

My product list in excel is actually coming along pretty well. I've divided it up into the three catagories of materials that we carry: Solid Surfaces, Tiles and Flooring. I haven't even begun to tackle the flooring side of things yet because that one will undoubtedly be the most complicated but I started on the solid surfaces and tiles sheets. I'm basically listing the features of each product hopefully the pricing but its been really hard to find that out.

As of now, my format doesn't really make sense but i'll ask P about that tomorrow. I think I will like looking a lot of this information up.

Heavy Lifting

After enjoying my lovely memorial day (no work for ISP or the restaurant on monday, aka, a miracle), I arrived at the office today to begin the lovely task of library maitenance.

The main focus today was the product sample library for the sustainable building material company beneath the architecture firm. Basically, there is this closet in the basement at the back of the material showroom overflowing with samples of different materials, some that we carry, others that we don't. My job today was to haul everything out of the closet into the show room, which pretty much took all day.

Seriously, all I did today was move things out of the closet. I don't really know enough about any of the samples or materials to know which ones can be thrown out or are old so it was kind of brainless work. Everytime I took a break I would google the different products and things like that but what I really need is for P to come down and sort through most of this stuff.

Concerning today, I didn't really enjoy myself because I felt pretty worthless. Today I really just felt like I knew nothing about anything. The closet in and of itself was pretty daunting simply because I don't know enough about the company or what sort of things we would keep rather than save which is understandable but annoying at the same time.
Hopefully tomorrow I can break the day up more with different tasks.