The Aerie
Of course, sometimes my productivity flags for reasons that are less
than entertaining.
The last three days have been exceptionally productive, so I really
was about due for a backlash. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went like
clockwork, despite meetings in a variety of diverse places and the
need to bill as much time as possible following and preceding the
Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. One downside to consulting: no
paid vacations. Well, not till we have employees :-).
Anyway I was about due for trouble when I left the house, and there it
was waiting at my car. A flat. Well, not quite a flat, more like a bad
sag. My left rear tire has been experiencing auto-da-flate ever since
September, and two weeks ago I spent $20 I didn't possess to have the
clowns at Tires Plus fix it. Now I knew going in there it was a
gamble: I've had work done at that place about four times now, and it
has never been successful, from the manifold pipe break to the brakes
seizing, I've wasted my money time and again with those idiots, only
to pay less to have the work redone right at the Midas at 6th and
Lake. And this time was no exception
TITLE:having had the valve stem replaced, the tire has resumed
flattening out.
Why do I go back to Tires Plus instead of Midas? Tires Plus is close
enough that I can walk home after dropping off the car, rather than
taking the 20 bus home through the worst sections of south Minneapolis
(and I've encountered violence on that route in the past so my fears
are not without some justification). But laziness is a bad reason, and
of course, now Tires Plus is on my "Never again" list (along with
genocide and celebrity boxing) and I'll never go back there again.
Until I get stupid and think, "Well, maybe this time..."
So anyway I drive over to the Super America and avail myself of one of
the remaining free services left in all of Creation: free air. I
imagine that the Free Air will be terminated about the time that the
government gets around to taxing the stuff presently floating loose.
They'll tie an elastic belt with a counter around every citizen's
chest, and the counter will issue a wireless report every month that
will show up as a breathing tax. About that time the free pressurized
air at Super America will end, forced out of existence by corporate
executives and other welfare cheats sticking the hoses down their
tracheas and absorbing oxygen without using their diaphragms.
Having aired up the tire, I head over to Clark's for my 10:00 a.m.
meeting. I realize as I'm going that I need to call one of my clients,
and reach for my cell phone. Ah, I haven't recharged it. Well, no
matter, I'll plug it into the car recharger... which isn't lit.
There's no red light. The car recharger isn't working!
By the time I reach Clark's I've concluded my cell phone will be of no
use to me today. I knock on Clark's door, and he greets me in
confusion, reminding me our meeting wasn't until 1:00. Despite this
hint, I fail to realize that the reason I think I have a meeting at
10:00 a.m. is because I have a meeting at 10:00 a.m.. I just don't
have it here.
So I spend a cheerful few minutes chatting with Clark, and head off
for my lunch meeting. But where is it? The person we're meeting with
described the Green Mill as being "way out there." Now where was that
again, something and Lexington? Then I remembered having once been to
a meeting "way out there" at a Green Mill at 35W and Lexington. I have
now convinced myself that this must be the intended meeting place.
But on my way I figure I'll stop by Kevin's house and see if he
needs/wants to carpool. I try to call him, but the phone dies on low
battery before the line starts to ring, and of course the recharger is
not working. But I'm early, so I'll just jump off the freeway for a
moment and see if he's home.
Now, in a city of stupid ramps, the exit from 35W northbound to
Johnson Street is only moderately stupid. It's not, say, as stupid as
the exits from Larpenteur and Como avenues onto Highway 280, but then
I can't recall if all, half, or none of Highway 280 is in Minneapolis,
or if it's in St. Paul. And the ramps on Highway 100 are doozies too,
except that they ARE rebuilding those. So while Johnson Street north
doesn't measure up to the capo de tutti capi of stupid freeway ramps
the -- one-lane Eastbound Crosstown to 35W North interchange which
regularly sports two miles of stopped vehicles -- still the Johnson
Street exit is pretty stupid.
[hd.gif] The ramp exits right off the freeway, meanders past a hill
that was supposed to be an entrance ramp but failed to sprout tar. For
a brief time the exit parallels another exit ramp, separated only by
two white stripes of paint. Yes, a prior exit ramp, with an even
longer meander, passes Johnson Street and empties onto Stinson. You
could easily cross from one to the other, but as Minnesotans we're
raised to pretend it isn't possible, and act like we don't even see
each other on the two roads.
Unfortunately the effect of having someone in your peripheral vision
driving in parallel with you tends to persuade each driver to maintain
freeway speeds. That's a bad practice, because the Johnson Street exit
ramp ducks left under the freeway, around a blind curve, and directly
up to a stoplight. The light serves to control traffic coming out of a
Home Depot whose driveway empties onto the freeway off-ramp. Beyond
the light is about 50 yards more of off-ramp, and another light
controlling access to the a city streets.
So you either make the lights, in which case you find yourself doing
60 MPH on a one lane bidirectional street designed for horse traffic,
or you DON'T make one of the lights, and you round the blind curve off
the exit ramp at 60 MPH and have to slam on the brakes.
Of course, there's another option, which is to round the curve, make
the light, but have someone exiting from the Home Depot parking lot
pull out and cross directly in front of you attempting to reach the
left-turn position at the second light, and that's exactly what
happened to me.
Now, the driving purists among you would probably point out that there
was yet ANOTHER option
TITLE:that of driving the legal and safe speed so as to leave plenty
of time to react to whatever might be on the other side of the
underpass. But to you I say "Ha!", and again "Ha!", with great scorn
and derision. And I do so because you're right and that annoys me no
end.
So anyway, I burst from the underpass like a bat out of hell, and
suddenly old idiot boy leaving Home Depot decides to pull across in
front of me.
Now my years of intense Jedi training took over. Because, you see,
I've developed the ability to predict when a driver may do something
stupid. I spent the 80's getting into accidents -- taking down
telephone poles while going backwards, and spinning around backwards
on I-94 in St. Paul, so that I could learn the skills necessary to
survive driving a Geo Metro at unsafe speeds in the year 2002.
I assume every car around me is about to do the stupidest thing they
could possibly do.
99.99% of the time I'm wrong. 99.99% of the time they do something
less stupid. But my ceaseless paranoid appraisal really pays off that
00.01% of the time when I'm right.
So it was that I found myself parked diagonally across the 35W exit
ramp at Johnson street beside an idiot from Home Depot, my view of the
other driver blocked by the cloud of blue tire smoke hanging in the
narrow gap between our cars, wondering how much closer together our
cars might have ended up if my rear tire were still low or had decided
to use the recent intense-braking-and-slaloming experience as an
excuse to blow completely apart. I consider flipping off the other
driver, but am unable to detach my hands from the indentations that
they have made in the steering wheel.
So the other driver continued driving nonchalantly on his way,
diagonally across the road, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I'd
nearly dropped an aluminum three-cylinder engine in his lap. That's
the whole Minnesota Nice thing happening. Since there was no polite
response to a near-death experience, he just pretended he didn't
notice the smoke and the blaring horn. Okay, so a Metro doesn't have a
blaring horn, it has something that sounds like a clock radio alarm or
smoke detector. Nonetheless, he ignored it.
Having avoided that disaster, I continued on to Kevin's place, but as
I reached his house, I saw that his car was gone.
"Maybe he's at our client site in St. Paul, I could swing by there
and..."
And then I remembered. The reason I thought I had a 10:00 meeting was
because I did have a 10:00 meeting -- at our client site in St. Paul.
Well, now I felt stupid. Which reassured me, because in a day full of
errors it was the only thing yet I'd gotten right.
So made my way up to the Green Mill at 35W and Lexington in a state of
great chagrin, arriving quite early for our 11:30 meeting. I set up to
wait at a table, and got to work on a proposal for another potential
client.
I didn't notice the time until 11:45. Suspicious that BOTH of the
people I was waiting to meet were late, it finally occurred to me to
check my e-mail. And that's when I discovered that the meeting was at
the Green Mill at Lexington and Highway 694. Not at Lexington and 35W.
There aren't so many Green Mills in the Twin Cities that it even
crossed my mind that there could possibly be two of them about four
miles apart on the same road.
At this point I began to wonder if I'd accidentally swallowed a bottle
of Stupid Pills.
So I called the other Green Mill, zoomed recklessly back down 35W and
over to 694 (don't even ask me about the woman on 694 driving 40 MPH
in the left lane, just don't). And finally arrived only half an hour
late to the second meeting I was supposed to have that day with my
partner.
The look he gave me would have reversed the state of water between
boiling and frozen, depending on which one it started at.
The meeting at the Green Mill went well enough, considering I'd kept
them waiting half an hour. I ordered the first thing on the menu, and
got a roast beef sandwich and a cup of soup, both absolutely terrible.
The soup was typical Bad Minnesota Soup: a cup of congealed fatty
white glop, more like a salty potato pudding than anything worthy of
the description 'soup'. The sandwich was worse: a product of some
twisted "focus group" experience held too close to a halfway house for
the criminally insane. It featured two nearly-hemispherical slabs of
bread, either one of which was too large for a human mouth. Between
these leavened pillows a clot of greasy brown salted shoe leather had
been disguised in a congealed orange coating of salted tire sealant.
A hippopotamus could possibly have bitten this like a sandwich. I
ended up extracting bits of leather and a couple of things that could
have been sliced mushrooms or possibly leeches, and eating them with a
knife and fork.
As if my nerves weren't already on edge, our waiter had the annoying
habit of barreling up to our table from behind me, and starting to
speak as soon as he believed he was within earshot. Since he was
bellowing at the top of his lungs, earshot was apparently about three
feet behind me. I'd be saying something when suddenly a voice behind
me would say "How's everything taste?" and I'd nearly jump out of my
skin.
But I was kind. I did not abuse him or abjure him or tell him that the
food tasted like a donkey that had been killed by a flaming salt truck
and hurled into a tire-sealant factory. Okay, I did gripe to my
tablemates, so I wasn't perfect. But actually up to that point I'd
managed to not really become too stressed at my complete
brainlessness, and I maintained a veneer of equanimity even in the
face of such indignities as were heaped upon me by the poor underpaid
restaurant worker.
Leaving the Green Mill I plugged in my car recharger, and of course it
worked. I'd brought it into the Green Mill in my pocket under the
theory that the recent cold weather had somehow disabled it, and it
appeared my theory was correct. I hooked it up, donned my Geeky Hands
Free Cell Phone Thing, and headed onto the freeway.
By the time I got down the entrance ramp the recharger had cooled off
again and stopped working.
Things improved from there, however. When we reached Clark's for the
SCHEDULED meeting, it was Kevin -- not I -- who forgot the Very
Important Papers which were the reason for our meeting with Clark.
While I'm sure he only did it to salve my feelings, I appreciate him
saving me from Utter and Total Humiliation in the Face of his Quiet
Perfection.
Of course, when I drove off to Kinko's to print out the documents my
cell phone still wasn't working, so I missed his call to have me print
out two Additional Supplementary Important Documents. But at least I
tried to redeem myself which is more than I could say for some people
*cough*O.J.Simpson!*cough* (yes, I have greater moral authority than
OJ Simpson -- how 'bout that!)
Anyway I had spent all my cash and several of my parking quarters
printing off the Very Important Document (I won't bore you with the
chaos that reigned at Kinko's except that if I were not Wile E.
Coyote, Computer GEEEEN-YUS, I would still be there and the document
would never have gotten printed). So it was just as well I missed the
call. But when I left the meeting at Clark's, headed to a client in
downtown Minneapolis, the only way I could park was at a meter with
the two quarters remaining in my car.
Therefore I spent a hurried half-hour at the client, zooming through
the hour's work I had planned to accomplish. Probably not the
brightest move, but it was late enough that if I stopped for cash for
parking, there wouldn't have been an hour left in the working day
remaining for the task.
Anyway I wrapped up my work at the client successfully, if not very
impressively, and left with a promise to return on the morrow. Thus
completing a very unimpressive and not very productive day on the job.
And now you know why I'm so unproductive. And getting gray hair.
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Posted by Albatross at December 6, 2002 12:00 AM