Another Chance to Make Myself Look Like a Crazy Person

Holy Moly.

This seems to be the week to knock me down a couple of rungs on the ladder.

When I was finishing up graduate school I had a fantastic opportunity to work on the Union Station renovation in downtown Seattle.

They really worked to make-up something for me to do on it, so the construction company hired me to monitor the subcontractors who did the true restoration work.

It was amazing to watch the transformation of that building.  I'm still proud that I had an itty-bitty role in that project.

Photo by Lara Swimmer

I love this photo from that project.  It was a wedding gift from my friend Lara Swimmer, a fantastic international photographer and one of the wonderful people I met while associated with the construction company.  

And yup, that's ME in the bottom corner.  

Wearing my hard hat.  

I used to climb that scaffolding and watch the artists apply the gold leaf details.

Somehow, for reasons I still don't fathom...

The contractor kept me on and asked me to be a project engineer on another construction job, and promised to train me.

Keep in mind I was an art major with a masters degree in historic preservation, I did NOT know new construction or have an inkling how to be a project engineer.

Somehow I found myself working on a $14 Million construction project (and other larger ones).  I was doing budgeting excel spreadsheets, writing Requests for Information (RFIs), Change Orders (COs) and providing submittals to the building owners.  It was all so beyond my reasoning and hard for me.

But- I worked with some really really great people.

And they kept promoting me...?

So I stayed for a couple of years.

One of the really really great people was the project superintendent.  I loved that man.  He reminded me of Santa Claus and he was always nice, even when I looked like a complete idiot and his blood was boiling over one thing or another that was going wrong on the jobsite.

I left that company over 10 years ago.  They've since been absorbed into another big, international construction company.

Then, last Friday, I zipped through Costco trying to be speedy so that I had time to run home, unload and put away groceries, and pack a lunch- in time to pick up the kids from pre-school and take them to the newly re-done Percival Park.

I'd just parked my cart at the check-out counter when I saw a man wearing the always recognizable Baugh Construction coat walking away from me.

(this is a picture of one the superintendent gave to me-the one he was wearing was a little more up-to-date)

I was so darn excited to see that man that I scrambled, grabbing Elsa, and raced after him calling his name until he turned around.

I completely left my cart abandoned, with my purse in it, at the check out.

When I caught up to him, he just looked at me stoically, not nearly as excited to see me as I was to see him.

But he humored me.

Let me meet his wife.

Said hello to Elsa.

Then the bagger guy came up and said they were ready for me to pay.

There wasn't an ounce of cool in my approach or talk with that man, or even my good bye.

But in true Superintendent Lantz style- he was calm and polite.

It almost made me miss the days of working with him.  The excitement of something big happening every day.

I was with him on the day of the Nisqually earthquake.  We had ironworkers erecting structural steel for the Boeing Wind Tunnel.  I'll never forget the look of panic on his face as he raced out to check on his men.  Or the relief when they were all accounted for and ok (even though those same iron workers were often the reason for his boiled blood).

I hope his heart has steadied now that he's retired.  That he can do all the things he enjoys.

Truthfully, I was really, really disappointed he wasn't wearing an airbrushed wolf t-shirt or big fancy wolf head rings.

It's so fun to run into someone you never thought you'd ever see again.

Even if you look like a complete a*# in the process.