When my alarm went off Friday morning and the beautiful voice of Sarah McLachlan began to issue forth to gently rouse me from my slumber, I found myself first swearing at her, then apologizing, because I love her and it wasn’t her fault that I had to get up.
Okay, so I didn’t actually apologize, but I definitely did swear.
Once I finally managed to roll out of bed, though, I quickly fell into the familiar routine, throwing my contacts in, brushing my teeth, grabbing my gym and lunch bags, and heading out the door.
Upon arriving I headed straight for the fitness center. Like most doors where I work, the door for the fitness center requires badge access. So I held my badge up to the reader, heard it beep, saw the light flash from red to green, but didn’t hear the telltale “click” of the door.
I tried it again: beep, green, no click.
Knowing that it wouldn’t work, I tried opening the door anyway.
When that failed, I tried badging in once more with no luck.
I swore a little more, then headed upstairs to the security office.
After getting the attention of the nice old man working there I explained my predicament and that there must be something wrong with the door.
For some reason he dismissed the fact that there was probably something wrong with the door immediately, refusing to even consider it as a possibility and determining that there must be something wrong with my badge.
There are two main entrances to the building. One is right by the security office, and the other is on the opposite side. I had entered the building, as I pretty much always do, on the opposite side, as that parking lot is closer to where I work.
That means that I had to first badge in at the gate to the parking lot.
I then had to badge into the main door that brings you into the lobby. I then had to badge through a turnstile, then another door before finally reaching the fitness center.
Further, to reach the security office after failing to badge into the fitness center I would have to badge through yet another turnstile.
So in that entire process the only point of failure was the fitness center door. To me this does not suggest a problem with my badge.
Even if I had come in on the security office side I would have had to badge in through two doors, the turnstile, and another door to reach the fitness center, and then back through the turnstile to return to the security office.
I politely pointed this out, and the nice old man suggested that maybe my access to the fitness center had somehow been accidentally taken away.
Admittedly, there are several restricted areas in the building, many of which I don’t have access to (though most of which I do), but given that the fitness center is a “general access” area for all employees, it seemed incredibly unlikely that my access to it would be revoked.
Still, he called in one of his roving security people to come up and let me into the fitness center.
As we walked down toward the fitness center the roving guard, a woman, reiterated the nice old man’s suggestions and threw out the idea that I might want to talk to my manager about making sure I have all of the access I need.
I didn’t say anything, but remained convinced that the problem was with the door, not my badge.
After making our way down the stairs we came to the door that opens to the hallway that leads to the fitness center.
This door requires badge access as well. She tapped her badge against the reader.
Beep, green, no click.
I considered saying, “Maybe there’s something wrong with your badge,” but instead said, “Now you know how I feel.”
We took an alternate route, and as we neared the fitness center, unsurprisingly, the voice of the old man came out of the roving guard’s radio saying, “Apparently that fitness center door has been acting up, so tell him it’s not his badge.”
This was made even more abundantly clear than it already had been when neither of the two badges she had could cause the fitness center door to open.
Of course, vindication wasn’t really worth all that much considering that I was now at work more than an hour early with absolutely nothing to do with that time other than take a long, long shower.
Through a combination of taking a very long shower and just taking my time with getting dressed I managed to wrap things up only a couple of minutes earlier than I would have if I had worked out, which is still a few minutes before I actually have to be at work.
For the sheer hell of it, and because I’m perverse that way, as I exited the locker room I tried my badge on the fitness center door again.
Beep, green, click.
Dammit.
Honestly, I really didn’t want to work out that morning anyway, but still, I had gotten up early and arrived there with that intention, so it was frustrating.
Later in the morning Brian, Chris, and I had gone upstairs to the cafeteria to get breakfast. When we were heading back down we overheard a guy from facilities talking to someone on his radio about how the door at the bottom of the stairs and to the fitness center were acting up. As I had related my misadventures to everyone earlier, I said, rather loudly, “You sure it isn’t just people’s badges?”
On Saturday and Sunday I was able to get in without a problem and managed to get my workouts, even though I didn’t really want them.
Especially on Sunday. I was mad the whole time I was in there working out, and spent most of the time on each machine swearing as well as sweating.
But the point is that I still managed to make myself do it, I guess.
This morning I was woken up by my alarm at 4:15 am because I didn’t actually turn it off yesterday morning. There’s a button that you can hit on the clock that will shut the alarm off and reset it so that it will go off again in 24 hours. Friday and Saturday morning I hit that one, so that it will wake me in the morning, but on Suday I usually hit the other button to just turn it off completely rather than resetting it.
This is the second time I’ve done that to myself. It’s pretty irritating, as I find myself thinking that I need to get up to go to work and it takes me a while to wake up enough to realize what’s happened.
I fell back to sleep quickly enough, though.
I woke on my own a little before 9 and was lying there enjoying the feeling of the cool morning air and thinking that I should get up, but failing to think of a reason why.
The decision was made for me, though, by my phone ringing.
It was my mother.
She and my dad are back in Michigan now. I know my mom is glad to be home, but I imagine my dad wishes they were still in Tucson.
As I suspected she would, in the midst of packing up and making the drive home my mom forgot that my birthday is in two days, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be getting anything from her in time.
Ah well.
On that subject, though, I did get an ice cream cake at work yesterday, so thanks again to Scott and Stacy for that.
Next week Kathleen and I are being taken out to dinner for our respective birthdays, which are in very close proximity.
As Kathleen likes to point out, though, mine does occur eleven days before hers, and because we were born the same year that makes me marginally older than she is.
She’s also quick to point out that of the two of us I’m the only one with gray hair, though I like to point out that I’m not the one suffering from night sweats and hot flashes, and that gravity is going to wreak a lot less havoc on my body than it will on hers…
I actually got some sort of gourmet hard candy in the mail from the management of my apartment complex as a birthday present last week. Some kind of lemon drops.
Last year I think they sent me Werther’s Originals, and the year before they sent me this weird gourmet chocolate.
On Saturday I’d gotten a voice mail from my eye doctor’s office telling me that my sunglasses had arrived, so this morning after I got off the phone with my mother I headed there to pick them up.
From there I went to Wal-Mart and returned the burned-out mixer I’d bought for the purposes of making the cheesecake for “Tucson,” who loved the cheesecake, by the way, and will be returning my container to me tomorrow when I’m at headquarters for yet another training session.
I didn’t bother hanging around at Wal-Mart, though, as today all of the inmates had been set free from kiddie prison, as the Virginia public school system seemed to be having one of its frequent “we don’t feel like teaching your snot-nosed brats” days.
I went for a walk earlier this afternoon and I went past a school sign that stated that today was a “Student Holiday.”
I continue to be amazed at how little time kids actually spend in school around here. I never remember having anywhere near this much time off when I was a kid, lo, those many, many years ago…
Anyway, I’m thinking I might go for another walk, and there are a few things I should do, so I guess that’s it for now. I’ll undoubtedly be back with more later.
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