infradig.org

For the first two or three chaotic weeks on site at the new client, four or five of us scrambled to cover six or seven roles among our various workstreams. The call went out for qualified help from any corner, and I suggested an independent contractor with whom I’d worked on a previous project. He’d just finished a two-year-long project and I wasn’t sure he’d be interested in going back to work without a break. But he was, and he’s been here with the rest of us for the past two weeks.

I’m glad. He’s bright, diplomatic, and a kindred spirit. It’s too bad his skills and talents are being underutilized but I can take comfort in the fact that he’s being well compensated. The latest vagaries of the project caused us to be assigned last week to different workstreams. I hope we’ll get the chance to do some informal knowledge transfer nevertheless.

He’s got a storytelling gift which I’ve been able to enjoy a little bit after work, although my running schedule conflicts with his time-shifted circadian cycle and nocturnal partying habits. I appreciate how he conveys a genuine sense of wonder and delight in describing relatively mundane experiences. Many of his tales are better suited to the Penthouse Letters column than to this blog; among the more tame is the story of his maiden drive to the customer site.

He drove twelve straight hours to get here, the last three hours through the worst rain he had ever seen on any continent. Besides the biblical flooding, he was also amazed by the sudden apparition of a brightly lit row of adult cinemas and porn shops along an otherwise-uninhabited stretch of highway north of the Missouri-Arkansas state line. No gas stations, no fast food, just smut. The row of tawdry developed properties ended as abruptly as it started, transitioning back into dense forest for the last twenty or thirty miles to the border. It was an interesting introduction in hyperlocal blue laws.

With a new compadre interested in looking for as much trouble as one might reasonably hope to find in Bentonville, and with a bonus night in town thanks to inclement weather, I suggested last week that we check out a sketchy-sounding roadhouse/biker bar that a friend had suggested. Alas, after an adventurous rental-car ride downtown, we discovered that the state had shut down that esteemed institution for non-payment of sales taxes. After a tour of two other extremely tepid “hot spots” I ceded further responsibility for checking out the nightlife. I eagerly await his report from this weekend.

Tonight I ran five miles in stifling heat with the Saucony rep for North Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.  I felt pretty gratified about keeping pace with her, she being a grizzled Dallas resident and all, until I learned her age.  (A gentleman never tells; let’s just say I’ll be thrilled if I can tear off nine-minute miles under blast-furnace conditions when I’m the same age.)  I felt relieved with a half-mile to go when she cried “Uncle,” started walking, and urged me forward to close out at my own pace.  Granny ate my dust and all was right with the world again.

The weather has been extreme since last week.  Before floods cancelled my flight home Thursday, there was the eerie pink sky at dusk with double rainbows last Wednesday:

And yesterday brought a 6:30 a.m. thunder-and-lightning wake-up call followed by two hours and 1.16 inches of torrential rains:

Front Desk Guy at the hotel told me (at great length) last Thursday about his upcoming six-hour drive to Kansas to chase storms.  Clearly he’s not alone in his interest; there’s a makeshift storm-tracking SUV in the parking lot at work that sports three or four temporary and/or makeshift aerial antennas and various other bits of gear bolted or duct-taped to the exterior. It’s begging for a photograph and I hope to oblige.

EDIT 26 June 2009:

My fifth consecutive weekly commute to Wally World proved the most eventful to date.  Generally speaking I prefer uneventful flights.  With regard to last week’s travel luck, however, I think on balance I came out even or perhaps slightly ahead.

In both directions, my first segment landed in a hub city early enough for me to stand-by onto the connecting flight prior to the one on which I had a confirmed reservation…but in both directions, that earlier connection ended up delayed.

On the way out, the airline held the plane (!) for twelve members of the University of Miami track and field team so they could compete in the NCAA Track and Field Championships.  I was amazed; anecdotes notwithstanding airlines never hold the plane.  Exhausted from the weekend, and frustrated by a “momentary” delay that kept extending, I pulled out my laptop to look over a friend’s resume as promised.  Twenty minutes later all the athletes were quickly seated, the door closed, and I switched off the computer and shoved it under my bag so as not to delay our take-off any further.

It wasn’t until I arrived in my hotel room around midnight and tried to plug in the laptop charger that I realized the computer was still on the plane.  I’ve left laptops at Heathrow security checkpoints a couple of times but this was a first.

I arose at 3:45 AM, returned to the airport, made some calm inquiries, and retrieved the computer before the plane turned around and left at 5:45.  I vaguely sensed that I had used up all my travel luck for the week.

My sense became less vague on Thursday when the airline canceled my flight to Dallas/Fort Worth about ten minutes before I arrived at the airport due to flooding and bad weather.  Bonus night in town.  No other flights home till 6:20 PM the following evening.  I thought, “At least I got my laptop back.”

On the second leg home on Friday, we sat and waited during the interminable diagnosis, attempted resolution, and eventual mitigation of a mechanical problem on an Airbus A320.  Short version of what happened?  Sorry—there isn’t one.  An inoperable air-conditioning module meant no redundant cabin pressurization system, which meant a restrictive maximum altitude, which meant less efficient engine performance, which necessitated an additional fueling.

Anxious though I was to salvage what I could of the weekend, I couldn’t have asked for better company during the mechanical delay than my neighbor in the window seat.

Rich was immediately friendly and welcoming as I took my middle seat next to him.  He was content to ride out the delay in our relatively spacious exit row as he sipped periodically from a travel coffee mug.  He was on his way up to Sitka to spend two weeks fishing for kings with buddies from his crew in Vietnam.  He mentioned that he’d checked mangos in his bag to make salsa to go with the kings, and I shared with him my forward-thinking, global-warming-dependent speculative scheme to start mango farms in Alaska down the road.  He told me how he’d set aside his wild-game cookbook theme to record some of his favorite personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and tall tales, such as ice fishing for pike that drew a bead on his hook with a glancing blow before doing a 180 and snatching the bait at great speed on a return pass.  Two other moments centered around fishing with his young granddaughter, including the time she stayed on her feet the first time she hooked a salmon that nearly jerked her out of her waders.  I heard about his ranch and hunting guesthouse in South Dakota, and his favorite homemade dish (venison sausage).

When we heard another disingenuous overhead announcement heralding a longer delay, he said crisply to me, “Get some ice.  Get a cup of ice.”  I thought perhaps he felt faint or flush.  When the cup of ice arrived, he pulled out a half-full bottle of Mott’s Apple Juice and poured some of the contents into the cup.  The biting bouquet of Jack Daniel’s hit my nose as he toasted our good fortune not to be airborne with an inoperable pressurization system.

We went story for story for about forty minutes.  By then the Jack had taken hold and we began to alternate between intermittent catnaps and nonsequitur rants: Great Plains politics, the Middle East, Alaska non-resident fishing/hunting license fees, the restorative power of both nature and glucosamine chondroitin supplements.

As we parted he wished me good luck; I wished him happy hunting on the seas and told him I’d added him to my list of role models.

Taking a break from writing a personal memoir on my ranch to fish in Southeast for two weeks with friends of forty years?  One could do worse than to end up like that.

• uploaded to YouTube videos of himself blowing up sundry foodstuffs and consumer electronics with fireworks, then distributed the links to both his clients and employers.
• unfailingly brought his travel toothbrush to the office each day for safekeeping, and left decoys in his suitcase and next to the sink in his hotel room, out of a constant fear that housekeeping staff surreptitiously dipped his toothbrushes in the toilet or inserted them into various bodily orifices.
• injudiciously chose a large meeting with several clients and supervisors to repeat Texas businessman Clayton Williams’ most offensive simile ever. I believe the remark ended both men’s careers in politics and technology respectively.
  

Never let workplace decorum stand in the way of impertinent personal expression.

And come on. Three pen collections? One is an accident, two is a coincidence…

It’s a pity because the government and the NYT suddenly seem to have discovered this week that events in Pakistan are important and scary. I wish I had time to respond deliberately but promptly, either rhetorically here or in a letter to the editor.

First, however, I must complete and execute a plan to deal with the impending completion of the initial twelve-month term of my apartment lease. Whether or not to stay, how much to pay, where else to go: hopefully all these questions will be answered by week’s end.

In parallel I’m also kicking off the knowledge-acquisition phase of a process that might culminate in more long-term housing arrangements. Watch this space.

Meanwhile I have three warm-to-hot irons in the fire at work. Potential destinations range from the Pine Barrens to the Ozarks to the Sierra foothills. Two project tentatively to begin next week or the following Monday. All three presume that I won’t first be terminated with prejudice for a normally venal but currently mortal accounting sin, the administrative equivalent of using the wrong cover on a TPS report.

I am also looking forward to running again Tuesday evening, having overcome the toenail and nettle nuisances, and mysterious 24-hour headache, following Sunday’s trail run. I didn’t carry a camera but photos of the trillium, salmonberry, and skunk cabbage flowers, as well as the slugs (black and banana) I saw, abound online.

I’d hoped to describe today’s resolution of the incident wherein the state from which I emigrated nearly 18 months ago threatened to seize my car because of a purportedly delinquent registration. Alas, that story must wait until I am more rested and less distracted.

Seen on the waterways around the Lake Washington Arboretum this morning:

• Three great blue herons: one quietly fishing at water’s edge, one roosting in a tree and preening near a Route 520 on-ramp, and one that suddenly squawked and swooped overhead after some sort of altercation with another bird
• Two pairs of white-bottomed buffleheads next to the Museum of History and Industry
• Several barn swallows flitting over Marsh Island
• A cute little pied-billed grebe that first dove stealthily away from me a couple of times but ended up following me (discreetly and from a distance) for about ten minutes
• Several chatty red-winged blackbirds hopping among the cattails
• Countless mallards and Canada geese
• A swan or two

Most of my cell phone photos came out awful.