Yes, once again I am about to face my psychosomatic allergy to packing tape, cardboard and dust. Thankfully this time it’s not my residence that’s changing, its my workplace, which means no only is all this going on someone else’s tab, but instead of leaving work to go home to pack, I can pack while at work and still have evenings off. Huzzah!

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Nearly a year ago my much beloved bosses invested in new property, one that was going to be our new home office. After signing a cheque with more zeros than the average person sees in a lifetime, they became the proud owners of a beautiful heritage Victorian house. Excited and keen, they gathered up the peons (me…did I mention I work for a very small family business?) and we headed off to a celebratory lunch and then to the new place to see what they had purchased. It turns out, what they had purchased was a lot of work, decorated with dead mice carcasses and dust.

Engineers were brought in, heritage societies were appeased, plans were drawn up, assessed, crossed out and re-drawn and eventually filed in the basement of the local planning office in a locked cabinet with a sign warning people to beware of the panther. Alright, I may have borrowed that last bit from Douglas Adams, but you get the drift. It was a long, painful process filled with delays and hiccups and amazing amounts of money. But now it is nearly done. The peons (me and the part time accountant this time) were taken on a road trip yesterday and shown the glorious transformation. Where once there were dead mice, now there are level floors and vaulted ceilings. Crumbling plaster has been replaced with exposed wooden beams and historically accurate paint and wall paper. Sad, dusty fireplaces have been updated with Victorian style gas insert fireplaces, and the place looks amazing.

Even the ghosts seem less distressed than they were. Yes, I said ghosts, at least two that we know of so far. The previous tenant’s receptionist cheerfully informed us that she’s seen an older man reading a paper in what used to be the front parlor when she was alone in the office; though that wasn’t the one I’ve seen. The first time I was shown the space I spotted a woman in very old fashioned clothing standing on the staircase. She looked at me and then promptly disappeared. A rather unsettling welcome, but when you live in one of the most haunted places in North America, you sort of get used to seeing phantasms from time to time.

And so with the new office nearly ready at last, it is fast coming to be time to leave the old office. Ten years worth of building plans, invoices, tenant leases, mortgage documents and half a tonne of other paperwork all needing to be sorted, shredded or packed into one of the 50+ boxes that arrived yesterday afternoon. It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks, and at the end of it we may wind up sitting in an office full of packed boxes and no where to go… because Murphy’s Law has already reared its ugly mug on this end of the planned move. Despite clearing informing our current landlords of when we intended to be moving, they booked an elevator repair service to take down the elevator for the entire month of March. So either we’re out of here in 3 weeks, or we’re here until April. The race is on, so if you’ll excuse me, its time to go make up a half dozen bankers boxes and start the process of getting us out of here and into our new office, where I get a window and the privilege of sharing my workspace with the ghosts of folks long past.