take your wife to work day, part 2

Well, I'm back with part two of Take Your Wife to Work Day.  Apparently when I ended part one, I felt that I had LOTS more to say, and now six days later, I can remember exactly none of it.  But I'm not one to shy away from a self-imposed challenge to make the mundane somewhat entertaining, so here goes. 

After Matt finished up his work, we headed to the elevator to ride downstairs.  The elevator doors were all mirrors, AKA my very favorite surface.  By comparison, here is what the elevator at my office looks like.

Basically exactly the same.

Here we are, ending the day.  My aunt saw this picture and said we should blow it up and hang it above our bed, because it pretty much showcases our personalities perfectly.  There I am, smiling and staring at myself and probably mid-sentence, and there's Matt, listening to every word but trying his darnedest not to smile because MUST KEEP A STOIC APPEARANCE AT ALL TIMES.

It kind of reminds me of the opposite of these photos that I came across this week. Matt and I went to the same elementary school, but didn't become friends until we worked together in high school, which was 15 years ago which is HALF OF MY LIFE.  These photos are from a few years later, but they're the first I could find of us together. 

Prepare yourself. 

I mean, could I look any less impressed?

I bet no one at that table INCLUDING YOURS TRULY saw marriage in our future, but life is funny.  

Anyway, we took the train home after work and I spent the whole time feeling grateful that I get to commute in my own car, controlling my own music, temperature, air flow, and route.  And most importantly, I get to be ALL ALONE.  Matt loves commuting on the train, but I don't think it's for me.

On Monday it was back to the palace for Matt and back to the salt mines for me.  And by salt mines, I mean the old hospital turned office building that's my home for 40 hours a week.  Let's just say it's seen better decades centuries.  To rub salt in the wound, the landlord sent out an email that morning warning us of some goings on later in the week.

Even with my limited, or to be more honest nonexistent, knowledge about plumbing, I think preventing back flow is a good thing.  Unfortunately the testing to do so would be accompanied by murky water.

Sure enough, the murky water showed up on Wednesday afternoon.  And shortly after, the power went out for a few minutes.  I shared that news with my mom and sister.  My mom is a teacher so she's home for the summer, but my sister is working with Americorps on a Native American reservation in Minnesota in her very own office that has seen better decades centuries, and was having it's own share of toilet troubles.

There's a phrase I never thought I'd write about.

Fortunately the issues in my office cleared up in a day or two.  Unfortunately for Emily, she ran into a problem of a different sort the next morning when she went into the office basement for native style embroidery training.

 

Also, Emily is eight weeks out of college and already has an "exterminator buddy" at her job.

I walked out of the office at the end of the day and took the elevator up to the third, aka top floor of the parking garage.  I park up there because our parking garage is crumbling bit by bit, and it's not uncommon for pieces of concrete to fall onto people's cars from the ceiling above.  My thinking is that if I park on the top level with nothing above me, then concrete can't fall on my car.  Also, if the whole thing collapses, I'd rather my car be on the top than in the middle.

ANYWAY I got all the way up to the top, only to realize that I'd made an exception to my personal parking policy that day and parked on level 2 because it had been raining when I arrived that morning.  While I waited for the elevator to ride back down, I stood in the vestibule and looked around. 

 The vestibule has a little bit of a greenhouse effect going on, and is always a thousand degrees and feels like mid-August, no matter what the actual date on the calendar.  I also noticed there were leaves on the ground from the fall, and the door was propped open with a bag of rock salt leftover from this winter.

So, I decided to use that to re-frame my thinking about my office.  

I mean, it's pretty much the Four Seasons.