Monday Morning Adventure

I was not particularly looking forward to work this morning. It seems like vacations are never quite long enough to renew the desire to return to the office. You go off and do lots of fun things, come home, and it's right back to the daily grind. A real work-inspiring vacation for me would leave me so bored that attending meetings and mucking around with spreadsheets would look exciting by comparison.

But I digress.

I was up late trying to get reacquainted with my writing and then I kept waking up every hour, so by the time the alarm went off at 6:00 I hadn't slept well. And it was pouring outside. By the time I needed to leave, the rain showed no signs of slacking off, so after Dan and I sat on the couch and watched the flooding on the news for a bit, he decided to head in. We work at the same place (different buildings, though) and he drives a truck, so I told him to call me when he got in and tell me how the water levels were.

Well, he called and said everything was fine, darn it. So I headed out. By this time the rain, which had been slackening, had returned in full force. I could barely see to drive, and what few cars were out there were just creeping along. But I live in an area called the Heights, and they don't call it that for nothing. We get street flooding at the side of the road, but we almost never flood. And most of my route to work is on elevated freeways. So after poking along in low visibility for about twenty minutes, I found my exit clear and thought I was home free.

Big mistake.

My office building sits off-campus, and to get there one must go up a sort of elevated overpass, then dip below ground level to go beneath a series of railroad tracks. As I started up the overpass, I saw a big pickup truck heading the wrong way with its flashers on. Then a tow truck zoomed past (going the right way) with its lights flashing. Then another pickup, also heading the wrong way. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. The underpass was flooded. I waited until the oncoming trucks had passed, then did a u-turn and headed back down.

I turned toward the campus, thinking I would house myself with the nearest IT department and beg a cube and computer from them, since a lot of people were flooded in at home and there would be plenty of space available. But then I thought better of it. I would have to re-build my profile on a strange computer, and unless someone who knew the names of my hidden mapped drives was around, I wouldn't be able to access my data, anyway. I don't keep the names of my hidden drives in my head, after all-- why should I? But my computer at home was all set up and mapped, with virtual private network enabled and all the bells and whistles.

I was going home.

Once back at home, I set up the laptop and emailed the appropriate people. Soon I got unofficial word from my boss that the university was closing. It took another half hour for official word to come out, and then I got it via an IT emergency notification system. The main university notification system didn't let me know until several minutes after that. Efficient? Us? Don't bet on it!

But hey, I ended up with a free day! How sweet was that?

They say we'll have more rain and possibly more flooding tonight, but I see no evidence so far. I have a feeling I won't get off so easy tomorrow.

Recent Workouts
Sunday: 60 min elliptical