Four More

A steady rain kept me under the covers this morning, not that the thought of going out in it anyway didn't cross my mind, however fleetingly. Although I'd done an easy twenty miles or so Monday morning, I was definitely wanting a little more saddle time after having been off the bike so much last week. It was not to be, though, so I turned off the alarm and took the opportunity to nab another hour of sleep. It's been a full week since I got any real exercise, and I'm starting to feel fat and lazy already. Always seems to happen this time of year.

By the time I'd finally rolled out of bed, gotten dressed, checked the email, and made some coffee, the rain had stopped, leaving me with a pleasant enough ride to work on wet streets and under a grey sky. I arrived at the office to find that they were having some sort of serious problem with internet connectivity. I called the "help" desk (I use the term very loosely), and after listening to the recording about my conversation being recorded, and giving the low-level tech person my name, phone number, address, and blood type, he finally told me that "the server is down." It was bullshit, of course, since I could get to our local sites fine and outside websites intermittently. A couple of hours later, things were working again.

My task list was calling today, and luckily the interruption level was low, so between my relatively early arrival at the office and abundant caffeine, I'd checked off a few "task completed" boxes before lunch. By then that two week old cookie I'd eaten for breakfast was long gone and my stomach was growling, so I rode over to Magazine street for a quick chicken pita at Reginelli's, followed by a visit with my dad at Poydras Home. Ten minutes after I'd gotten there some big ominous clouds started rolling in and I made a quick dash back to the office, arriving just as a few sprinkles of rain were starting to fall. Anyway, I'm still feeling kind of snowed with work and unfinished business. Aside from the usual post-travel backup at work, I also need to deal with the annual LAMBRA awards, get the annual business meeting scheduled, try to resolve some delinquent event reports, etc.

It was around 6 pm when the phone rang. It was The Wife reminding me that I had been volunteered to put up some Halloween decorations at the neighbor's house. So I sent off the last email and headed back home. It was still cloudy enough that I turned on my tail light out of an abundance of caution.

The weather around here is getting warmer and more humid by the hour, with rain promised by tomorrow night. It's looking like it will be Saturday before another cool front pushes through and cuts into this humidity. We will be having our usual neighborhood open house on Halloween night, so if you're not too busy, come on over and help us continue the tradition that started on the Halloween after Katrina. It was the first time that everyone on the block was back in their houses and we all ended up out on a neighbor's porch hoping to see a trick-or-treater (there weren't any that year, however).

So there are just four more mornings of darkness before we make the switch back to normal time early Sunday morning. I'm looking forward to that extra month or so without the headlight clamped to the handlebars. Of course, along with the extra light in the morning will come an earlier sunset, and before long I'll be riding home from work in the dark.