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bus engine fire
Monday, October 11 1999
During the night I had a couple horrible dreams. Not only did my mother die in one of them, but Sophie was hit by a car in another. Both of these dreams left me feeling fatalistic about life, like it didn't add up to any big deal. Sure, it's precious, but what the hell is it really any good for?
The day was wonderfully pleasant in all respects. The air was warm and fairly humid, enough to remind me happily of lazy childhood days back in the East. I was so wrapped up in this lazy attitude that I'm sure my bike ride took a little extra long for me to complete. As I was nearing the 163 cloverleaf in Mission Valley, I came upon a huge white cloud standing like a billowing curtain across Friars Road. Through this curtain an apocalyptic procession emerged. These were evacuees from a municipal bus whose engine had apparently caught on fire. Since the bus was one of those "clean burning" natural gas models, the cloud consisted mostly of carbon dioxide and water vapour, though there was also the strongly acrid fragrance of burnt lubricant, hoses, wires, fan belts, etc.
We had a strongly inspirational weekly company meeting this morning, the sort that leaves even a jaded cynic convinced that our company is poised to take over the world and be the next Microsoft (that's what the Grand Pooh Bah says anyway). But then I learned that our two networking guys have handed in their notices and are soon to be moving on to greener pastures. I'm gone for a week and come back to find the whole company engaged in a period of weird revitalization with every bit as much of the fuss and fascistic bustle of before. But it's okay; I was glad to be back. In comparison to the relentless accountability and expenditures of a supposedly fun vacation to New Orleans, my workstation felt like a calm place to collect my thoughts and precious sobriety.
In a way I was a little surprised to even have my job. It's been a year now, you see, and I can't quite believe I'm now 20% vested. Whether or not I expressed this in all it's glory, I'd been rather paranoid about being cheated out of my vesting. Now I feel that somehow I slipped through a trap that was built to fleece me. Suddenly everything seems easy. That's a good thing, because I don't have any work that really inspires me right now.
On the home front, Steph and EJ have sort of moved in with us in a one-day-at-a-time sort of way. They don't really know what they're doing since they're having great difficulty finding a place of their own. But they're awfully sweet people and are easy to get along with, so I certainly don't mind them crashing here. I've been in need of crash pads plenty of times in my checkered past.
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