Four in the morning, and all's well...
The surrealism of washing all four square metres of my kitchen floor (the rest is carpeted) on my hands and knees at four in the morning is my favourite part.
Dragging my not-very-drunk ass from from work at eight in the evening was a slow process. We left a half hour earlier than usual but it took us that much longer to shuffle our tired feet past all the rotten-fruit stands and not-very-greek sandwich places to the metro.
Goldenboy decided not to skip work yesterday after all and showed up with two bottles of fine, fine whisky (a nice smoked Lagavulin and a fresh sherry-like Glenmorangie) and by four in the afternoon, the server still not up, we all dug in and the boys told stories of canyoning from this or that cliffside, tried to convince me that beach sports is where it's AT, exhanged pleasantries in polish with a grinning young man with the same discoloration as mine named Piotr, and on and forth. The drooling SysAdmin stopped by to apologize profusely for the server delay and stayed to stutter over the whisky a little. THe boys had a good laugh since it is apparently rare for him to make the effort up six floors to see them, let alone apologize.
Now, for me, one centimeter of whisky is not drinking, but as Remy pointed out, it's cold up in Canada and I gots me a good store of fat to soak up my alcohol.
Nevertheless, I was surprised at even Goldenboy's raised eyebrow as I went for my second helping of Glenmorangie. Smoked whisky is nice and the Lagavulin was a gorgeous sample, but Glenmorangie is just... wonderful.
I even went back to work for a bit after that, the dry PKI documents that I was wasting time on were a lot funnier after a few inches of gold. I mean, when they feel the need to explain that a user's certificate will be used to certify a user...
...I know that I ought to tone-down my questions for THursday's meeting on the new project.
I really do feel stupid for killing that server, though. Granted, it gave me the time to explore the app a little better, learn a bit about libc and how to fix the debugger on one machine so that I won't have problems with it on the other, and I'm verging on becoming a FileNet expert since I needed to learn it anyway and when someone was having problems I offered to browse through the tables and find them.
FileNet has it's entirely own brand of SQL. Add that to the fact that all I remember from SQL in general is how to do a select and maybe, if I'm inspired, do a "join"...
In any case, I've got five days left to fix a script on the new machine, and I haven't even seen it run yet, been able to look at their previous error logs, or even begin to surmise why it could possibly be returning the proper exit(0) codes everywhere and just not be archiving the files like it says it is.
I'm just so fascinating some nights.
On the ride home I noticed how someone had scratched off the "re" and "l" in "Republique" on one of the signs in that station, leaving it as a rather comical re-titling of a particularly prostitute-laden area as "pubique".
It reminded me of how someone had scratched away at the "P" in "Peel" in Montreal, and how it had affected my blue-collar-work daze to be staring out the window of the train car at a sign ordering me to "Feel".
I wonder what a town named entirely by tree-huggers would be like. Would the words affect anyone or are we so drugged by our grandiose civilization that catching a glimpse of love and smile and feel would leave us colder inside? My baby sister spoke of Vienna and how the buildings are painted bright colours and how the people seem to walk brighter as a result.
I wonder. I haven't been there yet. I wonder what I will learn when I do.
I wonder if in their brightness they will keep the paint fresh or let it die with the strain of effort.
Thursday night a random telephone call informed me that I was being picked up at ten in the morning on Saturday for Cristal's birthday camping weekend.
According to the weather forecast it's going to be catching an hour or two of sleep under the stars rather than scrabbling for tent space.
I've been ordered to bring rollerblades and a smile, and after crashing into bed, lights on, shoes barely off, the moment I walked in, I think I may have just enough energy for both and maybe a bit more.
Tomorrow night I will be running wild in the grass, dancing with the stars and the barking geese of Farmoutiers.