Sigh... why does everything seem to happen at once?
So Wednesday brought us torrential rain, thanks to the remnants of tropical storm Faye. That morning, I got half drenched just going the 15 feet to my car. I managed to drive through rain so thick I could barely see the front of my car all the way into town.
That's when I realized I had forgotten my wallet. So, back around the traffic circle, 10 miles back home to get that. It had stopped raining mostly by that point, so I made good time back into P-town and on to Hwy 64. There I ran into the rain again.
This time, it was heavy AND it was moving in the same direction I was moving in, so I drove through a nasty squall line almost all the way in to Durham. It was so bad at one point that I could not see ANYTHING outside my windshield, and there was at least 3 inches of standing rain on the highway for about a mile and a half or so.
So I sailed my Miata across Lake 64 and finally got in to work. At this point, I had outrun the squall line and it was just lightly raining at the office. A moment of brilliance came over me and I decided to park at a building farther away from my office as I could get to within 100 feet of a door that way, instead of the nearly quarter-mile hike I would have in my normal parking lot.
My office is a series of interconnected buildings that form a circle. Imagine the Pentagon, but instead of one massive ring-like building, a series of about 10 buildings linked by shared walls or enclosed walkways with a courtyard in the center. That's my world.
So I entered building 060 and planned to make my way right around the short way to the back side of my building. Guess what? That's right. No can do. They're refurbishing that building, so the ONLY way from 060 to my building was completely sealed off for construction. So I had to walk all the way around the complex to get to my lab. I could have cut across the courtyard, but at this point the rain was coming down heavily again, so to avoid a quarter-mile walk in the rain, I walked nearly a mile through every building in the complex.
Now, before I get to the lab, I decide that I REALLY need to use the facilities. I stop at the closest one. Closed for cleaning! I start for the next closest one which is right outside my lab. Egad! That one was closed as well for cleaning. I had to trek BACK down the back side of my building to the most remote bathroom from my lab to find one that was actually not in cleaning mode.
Just one thing after another... Luckily, I had a spiffy cup of coffee that made the morning better, and after that things went much more smoothly. I still had to deal with some "other people's issues" but that's what I do for a living. Well, technically, I have my own stuff to do, but everyone seems to think that they can not do anything on their own, so they bring it to me to look at and tell them how to proceed. And I'm not even a real team lead...
Thankfully, though, I am on vacation starting right the fuck now. Off to Myrtle Beach with my lovely wife, my Swiss brother Lucien, my parents, my brother and his family, and we'll meet up with my best friend and HIS family as well down there.
Finally, a NICE LONG weekend with sand, surf and fishing...
Das Aggregator!