Stormy Weather

It is a rainy day today. It is rare that it rains all day, like it is raining today. The usual summer pattern is the afternoon clouds darken and rumble through, soak the ground heavily and thoroughly, and just as quickly as they arrived, they roll on their way leaving the sparkling blue sky to send crystalline glistens all around. I opened my eyes before dawn and heard the rain on the roof. I lay in bed listening to the crescendo. I like my bed and briefly entertain the idea of staying in it long past the work start time of 8:30. Briefly entertained, because of course it’s silly, and I do have to go to work. But it’s six o’clock in the morning and I have hours to lolligag. I thought of a dream I had, whereby I was in a large conference room, and all the conference attendees were gone, but had left behind all of their books and bags and purses. I knew that they had left them overnight. I walked to one spot, and picked up a woman’s clutch with an ornate clasp of silver and diamonds. I opened it, and saw a cell phone blinking with an incoming phone call, a wallet and a tube of lipstick. I quickly closed the purse and put it back down. I mused that the dream portends future financial opportunities(Publishers‘ Clearinghouse Sweepstakes with my name on it!!).

It is a rainy day to be sure. Since I bicycle to work, wardrobe selection had to be carefully considered. Then I remembered that I forgot to wrap a friend’s birthday present. Today is Julie’s birthday, so I wrapped her gift and signed the card and stuck it in my bag. I washed some strawberries and put them in a ziplock and put those in my bag. I dressed, donned my (awesome!) LLBean rain slicker, put a “Target” shopping bag over my computer case in my bike basket and headed in to the office.

An early morning call from a co-worker with a specific request took priority this morning, so I turned on my computer even before getting coffee. Outlook opened, and froze. I sat, waiting…watching the ever still hourglass. I control alt deleted and nothing happened. I cursed, walked over to Mark in IT and asked if I could just hard reboot. He said yes. I did, but the computer just showed it’s black to me. I cursed again. I walked back to Mark’s office, said, “when you have a minute, I need your help..no hurry, I’m going for coffee” and I did. Mark walked out of my office and said, “You’re in a bad way…” I cursed again. Mark spent all morning playing Hawkeye to my tired old desktop, then brought in a brand new, compact super duper new model, and systematically installed all the programs that this clerk insists on having available. I, in the meantime, fired up the laptop and began to satisfy the day’s demands.

It is lunchtime. It is still raining. Time to roll up my pant legs, don the awesome LLBean, and head back to work. Let us see what the rest of the day has in store.