Another Day in Paradise

Eh, what's up Doc?

It was a chilly, gray, wet day here in Little Rhody on the penultimate day of the work week. Seems like summer has been delayed for a bit.

Four beautiful warm days over the Memorial Day weekend, I was convinced that the warm days had arrived...

Not so fast buddy.

Anyhoo, the drive in was drizzly, as I rolled into the parking lot of my place of work, the rain seemed to lift, just enough to keep me somewhat dry as I walked from where I parked to the front door of the building. Which is named for a rather famous five-star admiral dontcha know? Well, it is.

I moved "offices" on Thursday, well technically I went from a desk in a cubicle to a more open area in the lab where I'll be sitting with the rest of the team for the foreseeable future. It took a bit to get everything set up, had my first iced coffee of the day (I have two, no more, no less), and settled in to get some work done.

Right around noon, when our team lead was walking in with his lunch, the fire alarm went off. Of course. To make things even worse, it was raining like it was when Noah was wrapping up work on the ark and admitting the last of his passengers aboard.

Out into the rain we went, I decided to not play nice with others and kept walking to my car to get out of the wet. Technically we're supposed to go to our assembly area where the folks in charge of taking head counts took their head count. I suppose that's in case the building is engulfed in flames, toxic fumes, or the gases from a bad lunch and they want to make sure everyone got out.

Problem is, I don't ever recall anyone ever doing a head count. Or taking a roll call of any kind. On this day I'm sure everyone in the herd would've said, "fire truck" that, and headed to their cars.

Well, someone actually shouted out to the dispersing hoard that we could go to another section of the building that wasn't affected by the alarm.

Now that would've been nice to know before my jacket and pant legs got soaking freaking wet. Anyhoo, back inside we went, to the cafeteria to sit out the storm. One of our number wanted to know why we could be in one part of the building while the other part was engulfed in flames, toxic fumes, or the gases from a bad lunch.

"Well, it's a big building innit?"

We all admitted that the logic was perhaps flawed but would we rather stand out in the rain? The consensus on that was a resounding, "NO!"

At any rate, we were cleared to return to our section of the building where we heard that the alarm had been caused by a water leak onto some hot piece of metal in a data center just across the hall from our lab. Which explained the unpleasant aroma in our spaces when we returned to work.

Thinking back on it, it took the local fire department not that long to respond to the alarm. Fifteen minutes or so I think. If something had been engulfed in flames, toxic fumes, or the gases from a bad lunch they were probably there in time to prevent lots of damage. But not all of the damage.

While I'd like to think that my co-workers and I could put out an obvious fire with one of the fire extinguishers strategically placed throughout the building, doing so with the conflagration in a locked data center might be iffy. My suggestion that a handy fire ax would be just the thing was looked askance upon so I pursued that no further. Though a colleague postulated that that would be kind of fun, it could also prove expensive. Best leave that to the pros!

After that the day proceeded apace, the rain reduced to a drizzle, I waded across the parking lot to my vehicular conveyance and headed homewards. The Missus Herself being out with her fellow Koreans, I foraged through the fridge for sustenance. At the end of my repast I went to look outside and saw that little fellow in the opening picture over on the side lawn.

I watched as he made his way to one of the many of The Missus Herself's gardens and proceed to dine on what I presume is a succulent. The love of my life has many of those on the grounds of the estate and within the manse itself. I seem to recall my paternal grandmother filling every available place in her home with plants, The Missus Herself seems to be on a pace for rivaling my dear old grandmother's collection of greenery.

Well, they are nice and they do swap our carbon dioxide for their oxygen. Seems a fair trade.

I'm not sure The Missus Herself would consider the cute antics of Br'er Rabbit being a fair trade for the devouring of her gardens, but I do. We have lots of plants and very few rabbits, the local foxes and coyotes no doubt keep their numbers down.

It does beat having the deer come in and chew up all the shrubberies, which they were starting to do in the late winter. Until the night the neighbor's dogs were out early to do their business (in their fenced in backyard). The baying and frantic running back and forth seemed to put the local whitetails off their feed and we haven't seen 'em since.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a National Geographic special.

But today is Friday, so...

I do like that song.