Days with Unexpected Twists

Well, I still haven't found a way to take a tropical vacation but today was, at least, not the typical run-of-the mill day at work which may not be the same as jetting off to Aruba but it's something.

It started when I got to the office. I noticed our HR manager was sitting in the car park in front of the building, on her cell phone. "Uh, oh," I thought. "What's up?"

I'm usually the first one in. Today, our HR manager beat me in but we were the only two. Turns out that after our power outage yesterday at work, the electric company hadn't restored power to our building. It was still out.

Our poor HR manager. She's come a long way in the past months. She still has very special moments but, for the most part, she's been doing a good job. She's the type of person who feels responsible for things when she's part of them, even if they're not her fault. Last night, for example, the power company had called her at 1 a.m. to tell her the power had been restored to our office building. She did what most normal people would do: She grunted into the phone, hung it up, relieved and went back to sleep. She trusted the power company which isn't such an extraordinary thing.

Nevertheless, this morning, she was furious at herself for not getting into work early enough to let everyone know there was no power and notify the power company. Given that it was 7 a.m., it wasn't like she was later.

Between us, we managed to let people know and our president sent out a text message to us all to tell us not to go to the office until further notice. Since I was there, I felt like I should stay to help out the HR manager. Besides, a slightly twisted part of me was reveling in the fact that I was at work and I couldn't work and that was a very small adventure but an adventure nonetheless.

When our receptionist showed up along with our tech support guy, we did the logical thing: We decided to go to IHOP for breakfast since it's pretty much in our car park and we could get there in less than 4 minutes. We left a note on my car so that stragglers could see it and we went for breakfast. A couple of others joined us but it was a pretty small group and there was a small sense of glee about us. Honestly, it was like being in school and finding out that the substitute teacher was going to let you watch a movie. Well, not exactly like that but the same sense of "we're getting away with something!"

The power came back on within an hour. On a normal day, I would have groaned but today, I actually had a ton of work to do so having a late start to the day with breakfast was good enoguh for me.

The rest of the day past by in a blur. I had a lot of work to do in preparation for a meeting but I ended up getting it done and, as a bonus, the day moved so quickly, I forgot to keep track of time.

By the time I got home this evening, my brain felt tired. It's the type of evening where curling up with a book is a nice option. Only the slight interruptions of puppy yips has disturbed me and, while I know the yips are probably annoying the neighbours, upon investigation, I discovered that it really wasn't the puppies' fault.

The bunnies have come to take their revenge, you see. Before you picture them with their Rambo gear, taking aim at the puppies, I should probably amend that to say that the bunnies are getting their own back on the puppies. It started with one. Now there are four. The bunnies gather in Possibly-Joe's garden which, as I've mentioned, shares a back fence with mine. The bunnies stay close enough that the puppies can smell them as well as see them but far enough that no amount of noses pushed through the fence can reach them. The puppies, as you can imagine, are going balistic. They so badly want to catch themselves another rabbit but the wretched things aren't stupid. They just quietly graze on the grass as the puppies become a frenzied mass of frustrated barking and futile digging.

I feel bad for the puppies but, at the same time, I'd rather they didn't catch another rabbit. The last one was a bit of a shock. The bird the other night was quite disgusting but not as bad. I've decided that the cicada bugs are nowhere near as disgusting as they used to be. It's all relative, you see.

Yet eventually the puppies give up for a while and peace is restored. I can return to my book and relax in the knowledge that tomorrow is Friday.

It's not a tropical escape but it works for me.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Crippled by a Thunderstorm

It was a really, really hot day today. I know I said that yesterday but today had to have been the hottest day we've had all summer. It was supposedly 96 degrees but felt like 112 degrees with the humidity. I can attest to the fact that there was definitely some nasty humidity out there.

We also had what our local weathermen like to call, a "pop up thunderstorm." This means that the sun suddenly goes away, the clouds roll in, the wind picks up and the thunder starts to rumble. Today's storm lasted about 15 minutes. It was long enough to take the power out at work.

Being that we're a software company and most our of products are web-based, there's not a whole lot we can do when the power goes out. Most people in our area have laptops. I do not. This usually means that I have to twiddle my thumbs while everyone who has a battery backup can keep working.

That didn't happen today since the internet was down and so were the phones. It essentially translated into about an hour of twiddling our thumbs until my boss decided it was close enough to the end of the day that we should just leave, especially since it didn't look like our power company was going to get to us in time.

Normally, this would be a moment of, "yay! I get to go home early." Unfortunately, in my case, he made the decision at the time I normally leave for the day so it wasn't so much a reward in my case as the end of a normal working day.

Still, there's something nice about sitting in the semi-darkness with your coworkers with nothing to do. It would have been darker if our emergency lights hadn't kicked on but it was still pretty dark in our area. We all ended up sitting around chatting because there wasn't much else to do. Without our computers, we're slightly crippled.

Of course, while we were sitting around, waiting for the power to come back on, we did realize something. The power was out which meant our phones were off. This may not seem like a realization as much as a "duh!" moment but it really was. You see, we've recently been practicing our office 'emergency drills.' In our case, this means a fire and a tornado drill. For the fire, we meet outside, the tornado, we head to the basement.

When we have a real tornado, the policy is that our HR manager will inform everyone that we all have to get to safety over our intercom system.

Our intercom system is our telephones.

When a tornado comes through, chances are, the power won't work. Thus, our phones won't work. The only way we'd know if there was going to be a tornado is if our HR manager ran around yelling and we all managed to hear her.

Of course, this is also in addition to the fact that the basement to which we must flee in refuge requires a key to get into it. We still only have one key for the basement and it's still on the HR Manager's key chain.

I think the conclusion we all came to was that if there's a tornado, we really hope we're not in the office. Otherwise, we might be in trouble.

Still, all in all, the power outage made things fun. I found it amusing that enough people in the office have read my book that my demon gets blamed for things like power outages. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read my book. It's now available in most electronic formats, including the iPad. You can also order a hardcopy through Amazon or through my website.

Yes, that's a shameless plug.

The best part of the whole thing was that even though my neighbourhood is close to the office, we still had power and it appeared to not even have gone out. Of course, by the time I got home, the storm was over and the humidity was even heavier.

I'm really hoping for another storm, to cool the air. Is it so wrong I sort of hope it happens again tomorrow while we're at work and takes the power out?

That's probably a little greedy, really but it does make for an interesting day. And sometimes, we just need those.

Happy Wednesday