Woohf, it’s been busy here at Erowid HQ since mid December. Jan 2018 was the busiest, most challenging month of our lives, making the previous peak of November 2015 seem like a recumbent-bike cruise in a park. Things are still running over capacity, but we caught a little break this weekend with somewhat fewer deadlines.
Our January schedule resembled some sort of uncontrolled explosion. Fire, Earth, and Sylvia all had a long lingering sickness, probably the bad H3N2 flu with possible secondary infections or over-compensating reactive systems.
A couple weeks ago, I posted Flaming Toboggan Ride to the crew blog to try to capture the sensation of this experience, but it didn’t include details about what’s been going on.
We’re normally good at managing too many projects and the associated stress, and except for the flu, this would all be pretty fun. Disabling coughing and lack of sleep make everything harder.
Super short version: 30-day eviction notice on office/library; horrible flu; find a better location for the library; sign lease; begin long new-office space preparation; Pineapple Miracle; Death of a Mentor-Friend; flu symptoms rebound to be MUCH worse for Fire (coughing, unable to sleep, fuzzy brain, could barely sit upright for a couple hours); Pineapple Miracle part 2 – Challenge Drive: Fire too sick to work; a crammed week of contractors and painters trying to get new library/office ready to move in; Erowid team bibliophiles come for a day to pack books (thanks!!); whirlwind neighboring cross-training gym team moves all our 300+ heavy boxes full of books & periodicals from the previous library office to the new library office in 20 minutes. Amazing.
A day or two to get the 250K Pineapple Matching Challenge up and running; Fire slightly better; trouble with bitcoin exchanges; insanely over-capacity Earth; try to keep balls in the air; lose one of our laborer helpers because he got a real job; building shelves; unpacking books onto shelves; trying hard to meet the Jan 31 move out date.
Fail. The very nice neighbor has agreed to Feb 12 instead, but it’s still days and days of work left. Finally find an open storage unit nearby to put all the Burning Man gear and camping gear into. Huzzah! Several pickup loads of Burning Man domes, covers, cloths, misting system, etc. out of unit.
A day of shipping before we tear down the HQ shipping office. Tear down office and pack the fragile items (glass molecules!) and put them aside so the clumsy (Earth, laborers) do not break them. Move all remaining office stuff and furniture to new location.
Plan a day off after weeks with not a full night’s sleep, but things go sideways in two departments (more later).
Last weekend, two days in a row with sufficient sleep. Much, much happier!
What we had previously scheduled for January was finishing, printing, and shipping Erowid Extracts #30. But the library/office move made that impossible.
So, sorry to everyone for the couple month additional delay in getting the newsletter out!
And many thanks to everyone who has supported the project over the years to get the stars to align at these particular moments.